OpenSSL project is considering to close this mailing list

[Michal Suchánek]

On Mon, Mar 20, 2023 at 07:20:43AM +1000, Tim Hudson wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 18, 2023 at 4:10 PM Dr. Matthias St. Pierre via openssl-users <
> openssl-users at openssl.org> wrote:
> 
> > Reading through the replies it seems obvious that the response is an
> > unanimous "No, please don't do it!!"
> >
> 
> It is to be entirely expected that those who are on a mailing list and feel
> impacted if it closes are the ones that would respond - that was pretty
> much the question - asking for those who would feel impacted.
> Right now it is sitting at about 20-30 people who have responded. That is a
> small set of feedback (given the size of the list) and the details in the
> feedback need to be looked at and responded to.

You should also consider there are might be users that do not feel the
need to just post +1 when the objections were raised by somebody else
already. That's generally useless noise but this time you are going to
interpret absence of useless noise as expressing disinterest.

> There is a lot more activity on GitHub and there is a *high overlap* in the
> types of items raised as issues and the openssl-users mailing list - and it
> is clear that at least a few of those on the openssl-users mailing list
> aren't participating in GitHub related activity - which means they are
> missing out on the *majority *of the activity that is happening in the
> developer community.
> 
> GitHub "watch" allows you to follow *all *the activity (which is in essence
> the only way openssl-users works - you get everything or nothing and you
> have to select what items you dive into and respond to).
> If you are on openssl-users to lurk and you are not also subscribed
> watching on GitHub then you are not actually achieving your stated
> objective of watching other peoples questions and other people's answers.
> 
> You should go to https://github.com/openssl/openssl and click on Watch now
> - selecting "All Activity".

Which means you no longer have the distinction between -devel amd -users
which is one of the objections.

> Quite a few of the responses from committers to this thread are interesting
> if you look that the *majority *of their own responses to questions are
> actually on GitHub and not on openssl-users.
> 
> The volume of traffic on openssl-users is small - and the number of items
> raised for which there is no response or there is a response which doesn't
> answer the question is relatively high if you look over the mailing list
> responses.
> The number of GitHub issues for which there is no response after 24-48
> hours is pretty much non-existent.
> 
> Those who are commenting about GitHub itself going away being a reason to
> keep an email list are also missing the point in my view - the majority of
> the developer-contributing community is on GitHub and interacting - and if
> GitHub should ever disappear we will simply relocate to a replacement.

And lose all the content - all the questions posted and answered there.

> GitHub's APIs are open and migration and gatewaying into GitHub is a
> straightforward process - and that is an *entirely separate topic* from
> keeping or closing openssl-users.

The problem is that the API is not sufficient so long as the data is
only kept with that one provider. Mailing lists are distributed to user
inboxes and some people randomly archive them.

I understand that this list is basically dead, provides very little
value, and if it's gone it will not change much.

However, those concerns raised about github issue archival are valid.

You may decide that problem is not important enough for your project to
solve it, that also works.

Thanks

Michal