[Nanog-futures] MLC post-mortem]

[michael.dillon at bt.com]

> I'll say it.... You, M Dillon, are out of touch with what NANOG is.
> NANOG is not a mailinglist software development 
> company/group, nor should it be developing it's own custom 
> one-off of off-the-shelf products.

Which is why we use Mailman to run our mailing lists and which is why
I suggested that we should pick some existing blog software to run
our blog/list combo. However, the fact is that if we want to solve the
scaling problems of 10,000 plus list members by moving to blogging 
software, we also have to find a way to maintain the email delivery
of the lists. That is the place where somebody needs to do some
minor development work because, unfortunately, there isn't a nice
off-the-shelf package with a GUI control panel and a checkbox for
this function.

Perhaps you are not that familiar with the world of Open Source, but
the software that I referred to with a URL is a selection of
off-the-shelf
blog servers. No custom development needed, unless you want to do
something
a bit different. And since many of these tools either have an explicit
plugin architecture (PyBlosxom) or are frameworks designed to be
modified
(Django-based blogs) the scope of the custom development is nicely
constrained.
I expect that it would not require much more than an additional database

field to record whether or not the posting has already been emailed,
along
with some code to periodically run through new postings and send them
over
to the list processor (Mailman).

Besides, once a community gets to the level of having 10,000 committed
participants/observers, it really is financially viable to formally
become a non-profit organization and own assets. Considering how many
other NOGs there are in other regions, I wonder how long it will be
before someone tries to organize them all in a mutual-benefit society 
of some sort.

--Michael Dillon