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<p>[Message sent to all QGIS's lists. Sorry for crossposting -
**please reply only in PSC list** ]</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>Hi all, </p>
<p> as you may know, we traditionally use mailing lists a lot in
QGIS project as well as for other OSGEO projects. <br>
<br>
All those mailing lists are server by mailman, a venerable piece
of code written by Richard Stallman. Those mailing lists are
hosted by OSGEO team (System Administration Committee known as
SAC). <br>
</p>
<p> Mailman is end of life and all FOSS project are looking to its
successor , like GNOME project for instance [0] .</p>
<p> Additionally, mailing lists are not used anymore by younger
folks. <br>
</p>
<p> Reason for this are numerous, from competition with instant
messenger tools, the lack of a nice responsive interface,
difficulty to search and explore mails on the web, or simply
because the monopolistic Outlook client does not make it easy to
use mailing list correctly. <br>
</p>
<p>OSGEO team has deployed a Discourse instance, and after 4 months
of tests with some early adopter -like QGIS-FR list - we think the
project is mature enough to start discussing about migrating
QGIS's main lists.<br>
</p>
<p>With this move, we hope that we can counter the current
fragmentation and streamline our discussions. Please fell free to
react. <br>
</p>
<p>Any help in this migration move will be more than welcome, from
testing and spreading the word, to buying a beer after this move
;-) <br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
## What is Discourse ? <br>
<br>
Discourse [1] is an open source only project built to support
community discussions, started in 2013 and thought to address the
gap between dying mailing list, forums and the rising instant
messenger tools dragging all discussions into private and locked-in
spaces.<br>
<br>
It allows advanced moderation, advanced notification settings, and
is thought to streamline discussions. <br>
<br>
It is already used by tons of community projects, you probably
already know it, from Gnome to Mozilla.<br>
<br>
Want to have a look ? The already migrated lists are there : <a
class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://discourse.osgeo.org/">https://discourse.osgeo.org/</a>
<br>
<br>
## What are the benefits of using Discourse ?<br>
<br>
It is searchable on the web, and can be explored lot better than our
mailman archives.<br>
<br>
It is extremely easy to subscribe to a category. No more need to
have one subscription per list.<br>
<br>
Receiving mails and answering from your mail client is fully
supported. <br>
<br>
You can copy paste images, videos, code and can react via emojis. <br>
<br>
There is a basic instant chat, based on matrix. We prefer at this
stage to use a dedicated channel to avoid confusion. (We are already
present on IRC and Matrix - see [3] )<br>
<br>
## What if I prefer mailing lists ? <br>
<p>Discourse offers options that are very close to mailing lists.
See Mozilla's tutorial :</p>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/how-do-i-use-discourse-via-email/15279">https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/how-do-i-use-discourse-via-email/15279</a><br>
<br>
## What calendar and steps for this migration ? <br>
<br>
<p> With the System Administration Committee we agreed to : </p>
- Prepare archive import for a zero downtime migration in June.<br>
- Start with PSC list first, which is smaller<br>
- Announce the several times for a month we are going to switch,
and ask everyone to create an account on Discourse via OSGEO LDAP
connector. Channels will be lists themselves, blog, QGIS desktop
feed, and asks for communities and user groups to relay in their
dedicated channels.<br>
- Do some tutorials about how to handle notifications and advanced
options<br>
- Do the switch list per list during june<br>
- Put old mailing list in archive mode with disclaimers. <br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>## What about private lists ? <br>
</p>
<p>We currently have private lists like QGIS-voting-members or
PSC-Private. We did not tested this yet, but Discourse has
options for this [2] <br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>Any thought from you is more than welcome, from ranting against
modernity to thanking SAC for their hard work. <br>
</p>
<p>Best regards ,</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>Régis on behalf of your beloved PSC<br>
</p>
<br>
<br>
[0]<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://discourse.gnome.org/t/common-questions-re-mailman-to-discourse/11841">https://discourse.gnome.org/t/common-questions-re-mailman-to-discourse/11841</a>
<br>
<p> [1] <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.discourse.org/">https://www.discourse.org/</a></p>
<p>[2]
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://meta.discourse.org/t/understanding-groups-and-category-permissions-security-settings/87678">https://meta.discourse.org/t/understanding-groups-and-category-permissions-security-settings/87678</a>
<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p></p>
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