[sf-lug] Have you guys thought about http://www.freelists.org/ (hosted ...)

[Michael Paoli]

Yes, the pros/cons of hosted vs. non-hosted have generally been
debated/argued ad nauseum.

Though hosted services do have their advantages, they also very much do
also have their disadvantages, e.g.:
o it can be difficult to infeasible to backup/retrieve all of one's data
o the service may go away or fail at any time, and there may be little
   to nothing one can do about it
o it may be difficult to infeasible to have domain(s), list name(s),
   etc., as one wants - at least short of handing over most or all of
   use/control of a domain and/or (additional) charges for such
o it may be difficult to infeasible, if not "impossible" to
   transparently migrate the list elsewhere - user list pain generally
   causes significant drops in subscribers.
o typically free hosted services may go away at any time with little to
   zero notice - and generally little to nothing one can do about it.
o http://www.freelists.org/ - well intentioned as they might be, also
   has terms such as:
   "acceptability of all list material is subject to FreeLists' approval;
   our word is final. Any list traffic discussing any unacceptable
   material (at the discretion of FreeLists) will result in immediate
   removal of the list in question."
   So, if you run an unmoderated list, one posting deemed sufficiently
   unacceptable, and your list can go bye-bye at any time, forever.
   Of course one can run a strictly moderated list - that of course
   involves lots of work on the part of some listadmin(s) to approve any
   and all postings which are to go through to the list subscribers -
   that takes fair bit of human resource - also substantially increases
   latency on list postings.

FYI, the sf-lug list *is* hosted :-) ... by the good graces of Rick Moen
on linuxmafia.com.  It's also hosted (as are all the lists he hosts
there) in manner which makes it not only easy to back up then entire
list archive - and in quite optimal form (so it can be reloaded into
same, similar, or even different list software), but *anyone* with
Internet access has the access to be able to back that up.  He also
makes the list subscribers available to relevant folks (e.g. myself, Jim
Stockford, and of course Rick Moen have full regular access to that,
also per policy/configuration on sf-lug list, if I'm not mistaken, any
and all subscribers can access the email addresses of all "non-hidden"
subscribers).  And for a fair while now, I've been regularly (typically
daily) backing that data up (well, because nobody else had bothered to
do it earlier, and rather a pain when the data is wanted/needed, and
it's not accessible and nobody's backed it up ...  well, actually Rick
Moen also had, and I presume has, backups, but at least at the time
that would involve on-site trip, physical connections, etc. - certainly
good to have the data, but not as convenient as also having at least
one remote on-line accessible backup).  And yes, I also make the list
archive backup available (and even its change history so earlier
versions can be retrieved/reconstructed).

Also, I didn't take the sf-lug list down at any time for the upgrades I
performed in what you reference.  Hopefully that was also sufficiently
clear in what I posted and/or the references/links I included (including
recursively following such if/as necessary and relevant).  I see nothing
in what I posted that implied the sf-lug list or linuxmafia.com was or
would be down or that it wasn't (relatively) high availability (at least
compared to virtual machine running on my personal laptop - which does
have the sf-lug site go out when my laptop goes out ... hopefully that
situation will be improved in near future ... waiting on some resources
to be able to do that.)

references/excerpts:
http://linuxmafia.com/pipermail/sf-lug/2015q4/011454.html
http://linuxmafia.com/pipermail/sf-lug/2015q4/011441.html

> From: Shane Tzen <shane at faultymonk.org>
> Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2015 15:56:14 -0800
> Subject: Re: [sf-lug] updated/upgraded: SF-LUG - operating system  
> presently hosting
> To: Michael Paoli <Michael.Paoli at cal.berkeley.edu>
> Cc: SF-LUG <sf-lug at linuxmafia.com>
>
> Have you guys thought about http://www.freelists.org/about.html ?
>
> Looks like various LUGs are hosted -
> http://www.freelists.org/cat/Linux_and_UNIX
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 30, 2015 at 3:41 AM, Michael Paoli <
> Michael.Paoli at cal.berkeley.edu> wrote:
>
>> It's been updated/upgraded:
>> from: Debian GNU/Linux 7.9 (wheezy)
>> to: Debian GNU/Linux 8.2 (jessie)
>>
>> http://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-admin-balug.org/2015-October/002989.html
>>
>> Still definitely *not* high availability though (alas, still sits atop
>> a virtual machine on my *laptop*!).
>>
>> Hopefully in not too horribly distant future (like *real soon*), the
>> physical box the site was earlier running upon will be successfully
>> retrieved - once that happens, some high(er) availability options
>> become possible.
>>
>> Let me know if you notice anything awry (notwithstanding the less than
>> high availability).
>>
>> From: "Michael Paoli" <Michael.Paoli at cal.berkeley.edu>
>>> Subject: It's alive*!: Re: SF-LUG - DNS, web site, ..., etc.
>>> Date: Mon, 24 Aug 2015 03:10:26 -0700
>>>
>>
>> Anyway, have taken the liberty ...
>>> it's alive* ...
>>> the [www.]sf-lug.{org,com}
>>> websites are available again.