Tuesday, March 2, 2010

NGWList migration / future

The list was migrated back in January to a new server and new software after losing the free co-lo we had for the previous 10 years at a friend's office.

I've been running the list since Jan 1995, so its been 15 years now, and to tell the truth, I'm burned out. I'm just not interested anymore. I haven't played with GroupWise since 1999ish. Most of my coworkers from my Groupwise days have moved on to other things. (except rbliss and morius) I've found myself with less and less attachment to the list, and as a result, I'm going to be stepping aside. I've invited Danita and Gert to join me in managing the listserver, and as soon as they are up to speed, I will hand everything over to them.

I'm hoping we can setup some kind of self-governing community where the list management can be delegated to involved-but-impartial people when needed. Right now, Danita and Gert fit that bill. Later, when/if they burn out, they can find someone to fill their slots.

The new server is a leased VPS and costs about $20/month. We need to work out how the payment for the server is going to be done. Right now its coming out of my pocket, and I would like to foist this off on someone else.

Even though it does cost to host the listserver (as opposed to finding a sugar-daddy vendor or .edu to host it), with the server being in the 'cloud', any ngwlister can manage it just as easily as another, making it easier to do management hand-offs. In the past, the few times we ever had a management hand-off, it usually involved new software, new host, etc, with a lot of pain converting archives, resubscribing users, etc.

Anyway, thats the plan. Please email me or start a discussion on the list with comments.

What do you think about serverfault.com?

I'm addicted to its sister site, stackoverflow.com, and I was wondering if any ngwlisters think that something like serverfault might be a better than an email listserver.

Current groupwise issues on serverfault

Update: someone pre-read my mind and did it: http://www.groupwise.co.uk/