[Sorry for cross-posting - feel free to forward around] Dear all, I'm sending this e-mail to all mailing lists/persons I think (often with a less-than-optimal inductive process) could be interested in the future of what's currently know as the "AGNULA Newsletter". If you receive multiple copies of this e-mail or if you are not interested at all in the subject, please excuse me and drop everything to the bitbucket. First, a bit of history. The AGNULA newsletter was born in Nov 2003 (more or less) as a service to our users who could be informed of new software releases, events, research achievements in the field of music & sound, with specific preference given to topics related to Libre Software. You can see some more information here: http://www.agnula.org/documentation/newsletter/ (you can find the past issues archive at the same URL). The AGNULA Newsletter was never meant to be AGNULA-centric (although, as was recently pointed out on our mailing lists, the naming we chose could suggest that) but rather as a way to spread information about the above mentioned topics - and of course to talk about AGNULA news, if relevant. Over the time we managed to send around 12 weekly issues of the newsletter to our `newsletter-dist' mailing list subscribers, who currently amount to 70. Honestly, given the young age of the newsletter and the amount of manpower we've been able to put into it, I'm not too dissatisfied with these numbers. However, as the AGNULA project is reaching the end of its funded lifetime I think it's high time that we think whether the AGNULA Newsletter should become something bigger and better organized. What does this mean? Basically, I'd like to understand whether the wider GNU/Linux audio (and video?) community is interested in turning the newsletter into a "community project". What we would basically need is: (a) that Libre Software project maintainers add the newsletter contact address (currently newsletter-collect@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, but this is not cut in stone) so that when they send announcements about new releases the newsletter team is notified more quickly; (b) a (team of) editor(s) for the newsletter. I've been doing that for the past months, but time pressure is growing and since my position as AGNULA technical manager will end in April, I forecast I won't have the same amount of time to dedicate to this project. A native english speaker would be preferred, of course; (c) a (team of) news pieces collectors/writers. The AGNULA project can give (or try to give :) all the necessary instruments needed by the newsletter team to coordinate their work - that means CVS, bug tracking system, mailing lists, whatever; (d) [optional] a (team of) translators to create nationalized versions of the newsletter. This is of course a long-term goal and can be put aside for the moment. So, the question is: do you think this - turning the AGNULA Newsletter into the "AGNULA Newsletter on Sound & Video" or even the "Newsletter on Sound & Video", although I'd like the AGNULA name to remain somewhere in the newsletter, if anything for sentimental reasons :) - is a good idea? If any of you think it is, I would encourage all of you to discuss the topic on: users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.agnula.org/mailman/listinfo/users If you are not subscribed to the mailing list, don't worry - I'll authorize your messages as they arrive. Please put a clear sign that you want to be put in Cc: for replies. Thanks for your time and attention, Andrea Glorioso AGNULA Technical Manager
