[Mailman-Users] Mailman 2's future (was Re: Filtering out Digest replies)

[Barry Warsaw]

On Jul 12, 2016, at 12:22 PM, Mark Sapiro wrote:

>It depends on how you define "end of life". Granted there will be MM 2.1
>lists in use for a very long time. There may still even be Mailman 2.0
>lists in active use.
>
>The real question is not how long there will be users, but how long will
>Mailman 2.1 be actively supported and maintained, and whether it makes
>sense for new installations to use a package with little or no further
>development in sight vs. one with an active and growing development and
>support community.

Like all FLOSS software, future development and support is highly dependent on
finding volunteers interested enough to donate their time to work on it.  It's
rare to be paid to work on FLOSS, and I can only say that *I* am not paid to
work on Mailman.

Mark is my hero, for long ago having taken over the task of maintaining
Mailman 2.1 and allowing me to concentrate on Mailman 3.  I greatly appreciate
Steve and all of you who continue to dedicate your time to help each other,
solve problems, and keep the Mailman community thriving.

I have no interest or time to devote to Mailman 2.  The code is 20 years old,
and like Python 2, I find it very hard to get motivated to wade into it.  Mark
knows way more about it than I remember at this point anyway.  I am spending
my free time trying to make Mailman 3 a compelling and stable upgrade path,
with code that's a joy to work in, an architecture that is clean, flexible,
and robust, and a universe of tools and subprojects that bring the Mailman we
love forward to modern practices, and which integrate better with all the
other outlets people have for online communication.

Just like with Python 2, Mailman 2.1 will continue to be actively and happily
used for many years to come.  If and when Mark decides to spend more time on
Mailman 3 (\o/) others in this community can rise to the challenge of
continuing to support Mailman 2.  That's what a volunteer community is all
about.

There is lots of fun stuff to do, and I call on you to find areas of interest
to get involved in.  Almost anything you *want* to do *needs* to be done, and
we developers are a nice bunch of people, so please join us!

Cheers,
-Barry
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