[Mailman-Users] (no subject)

[paul at thcwd.com]

schuetzen wrote:
>my point is this.  Yahoogroups, in case you live in outer Botswana, is 
>about to
>start charging for their email lists.  When that happens, and I am sort of the
>front of the wave if not even further back than that, there are going to be
>literally tens of thousands of list owners looking for a perfectly simple and
>yahoo like mail program which does not require learning all about MTAs and
>other, ancillary programs which should be in the main software already - so as
>to be able to take their lists to a webhost and move on without the charges
>which are going to otherwise have to be passed on to the listmembers.

      What you say is true, and it's not just Yahoogroups - within the year 
I suspect free mail list services will be pretty much dead.  This is why I 
started to look at Mailman last July.  It was WAY over my head, so I 
started learning what I would need to know to pull it off.  I also decided 
I needed features which were due out in the next release, so I waited till 
January to do my install.  After some false starts because of other 
software on my server I got it going.  Now I am working on taking the core 
mailman and making it do most of what Yahoogroups does.  I've just gotten a 
functional post from the web (archives) system to work (it picks up the 
users e-mail address from the log in and uses the to send the post.)  I 
hope to start transferring my lists to my server in June - 11 months after 
I started.

>I am looking for a knock off of Yahoo or Egroups or Onelist's software so 
>that I
>can move my lists to my piece of the inet.

      It's not out there, unless you want to pay huge $$.  Your choices are 
1) learn enough to use something like Mailman, 2) pay someone else to use 
their system, 3) pay for a professional mail package.  Your choice

      And yes, as Yahoo and others start to charge, we are likely to be 
over run with newbies who have no idea what Linux or Python are, but expect 
someone to help them get Mailman.

<>< Paul