[gopher] Next steps on this list

[John Goerzen]

Good morning folks,

Thanks for the discussion here.  Some thoughts on what we do next so we
can stop bikeshedding list hosting and get back to our dream of a
JavaScript-free Internet...   (ahh, one can dream.)

My main principle is "first, do no harm."  To that end, I intend to work
to help migrate the subscriber list to the eventual destination, with a
strong preference for any service that is easy to use and doesn't rely
on just one person to keep it working.

I have seen communities die for various reasons: the one guy running the
list server disappears, everybody says "we're moving here" and only a
third of the people follow, etc.  The lesson is: make the move as
frictionless for all as possible.  The move from my server to Alioth had
several reasons, but me not wanting to be a single point of failure was
among them.

It is, of course, not possible to migrate a subscriber list to NNTP.  I
fully support a gateway to NNTP for those that would like such things.
I would be happy to help organize this with the new host if someone is
setting it up.  However, I view "just shut the list and tell everyone to
use comp.infosystems.gopher" as likely death to the community we have
here, so I want to have something better available.  As far as I know,
it is not possible to migrate an email subscriber list to the Google
Groups email gateway for a newgroup.

I have made sure, over time, that the entire history of this list was
available on Gmane, which conveniently also provides an NNTP gateway.
Gmane is not what it once was, but I will also see what I can do there
to keep it working.

At the moment, I believe we have one option that is maintained by more
than one person (lists.debian.org).

John