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

[Rick Moen]

Thanks, Michael, for those comments and your many good deeds.

Quoting Michael Paoli (Michael.Paoli at cal.berkeley.edu):

> 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."

In fairness, if I found that one of the mailing lists I host as a
courtesy to the community on my linuxmafia.com server was doing
something very grossly illegal, I would probably be at least briefly
_tempted_ to intervene in some way, out of concern for my own liability.  
Or maybe it's more accurate to say that I used to worry about this
possibility:  Recently, I became aware of Federal law 47 U.S.C. 230,
passed as part of the Communications Decency Act, which reduces this 
concern by stating in part:

  No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be
  treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by
  another information content provider.

This probably shields me in my role as a 'provider of an interactive
computer service'.  (Except its immunity doesn't cover Federal criminal
liability and intellectual property law, so in theory personal liability
concerns could arise.)

> 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....

Yes, and this has always been strongly my preference.  Nobody whose
mailing list I host should have any reason to perceive lock-in, and I'm
delighted that you (Michael) with your good work finally implemented
periodic backups of all SF-LUG mailing list state that matters.  (FWIW,
there is some per-user and listwide state that y'all aren't backing up,
but in context I doubt this really matters.)

> (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).

This is the case, and is the default on all Mailman lists I create
except for announce-only ones (like svlug-announce), and my strong
personal preference.  However, if SF-LUG leadership ever elected to
change this setting to anything else, that would be their business and
not mine.  (I am not on the roster of listadmins for this list, and 
maintain a hands-off attitude.)




> 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).

Exactly right.  I explicitly offered during the late-2014 downtime
access to my backups, which were on an ext3 filesystem and would have 
required getting to the data from GNU Mailman's native storage.  The 
current backups are, as you say, automated, offsite, and in commodity
data formats, which is greatly better.

> Also, I didn't take the sf-lug list down at any time for the upgrades I
> performed in what you reference.

In case it's useful to further clarify:  Michael's upthread reference
was to SF-LUG's erstwhile sf-lug.com/.org _Web_ server, housing the
group's various Web pages -- not this mailing list.  (FreeLists, which
Shane Tzen recommended, is some sort of collective to provide a subset
of the Internet community with gratis-with-contributions mailing list
hosting.)

Some good hosting for the Web pages would be most excellent and
appreciated.  And of course Shane's suggestion should be also appreciated,
as of very constructive intent.

-- 
Cheers,                                  "If you see a snake, just kill it. 
Rick Moen                                Don't appoint a committee on snakes."
rick at linuxmafia.com                                         -- H. Ross Perot
McQ! (4x80)