On Sat, Mar 18, 2023 at 4:10 PM Dr. Matthias St. Pierre via openssl-users <openssl-users@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Reading through the replies it seems obvious that the response is an unanimous "No, please don't do it!!"
It is to be entirely expected that those who are on a mailing list and feel impacted if it closes are the ones that would respond - that was pretty much the question - asking for those who would feel impacted.
Right now it is sitting at about 20-30 people who have responded. That is a small set of feedback (given the size of the list) and the details in the feedback need to be looked at and responded to.
There is a lot more activity on GitHub and there is a high overlap in the types of items raised as issues and the openssl-users mailing list - and it is clear that at least a few of those on the openssl-users mailing list aren't participating in GitHub related activity - which means they are missing out on the majority of the activity that is happening in the developer community.
GitHub "watch" allows you to follow all the activity (which is in essence the only way openssl-users works - you get everything or nothing and you have to select what items you dive into and respond to).
If you are on openssl-users to lurk and you are not also subscribed watching on GitHub then you are not actually achieving your stated objective of watching other peoples questions and other people's answers.
You should go to https://github.com/openssl/openssl and click on Watch now - selecting "All Activity".
Quite a few of the responses from committers to this thread are interesting if you look that the majority of their own responses to questions are actually on GitHub and not on openssl-users.
The volume of traffic on openssl-users is small - and the number of items raised for which there is no response or there is a response which doesn't answer the question is relatively high if you look over the mailing list responses.
The number of GitHub issues for which there is no response after 24-48 hours is pretty much non-existent.
Those who are commenting about GitHub itself going away being a reason to keep an email list are also missing the point in my view - the majority of the developer-contributing community is on GitHub and interacting - and if GitHub should ever disappear we will simply relocate to a replacement.
GitHub's APIs are open and migration and gatewaying into GitHub is a straightforward process - and that is an entirely separate topic from keeping or closing openssl-users.
Issues on GitHub cover a wide range of topics. I don't think there is a single topic on openssl-users that isn't also in the GitHub issues - except for a small amount of announcements which are sent to openssl-users and openssl-project.
Summary:
- if you are simply lurking, then you should be watching GitHub issues as you are missing the majority of the interactions
- if you won't go to GitHub regularly and simply want to see things in email, then you should be watching GitHub issues as you are missing the majority of the interactions
- if you are responding to questions and you are not also responding on GitHub and would cease to contribute if openssl-users disappeared then please speak up - the majority who have responded indicating a preference for the mailing list are also highly active on GitHub
It would be useful to understand who is on the mailing list and not already watching on GitHub - I'm taking an educated guess here that it is a non-zero portion of openssl-users (and probably many of those are lurkers).
One thing we could look at doing is adding a label for GitHub issues that denote them as user questions rather than developer questions (as those are all intermixed both on GitHub and on openssl-users).
Having an email gateway that forwards just issues containing such a label might be useful for non-developers - it would serve the purpose of lurk-only users.
That leads to another question - what is the mix of developers / non-developers on openssl-users - a question to which we don't have an answer.
What is the mix of those who answer questions to those who ask questions? And of those who answer, what portion is not also active on GitHub?
Remember what the question was:
We are seeking input on this potential change if you are currentlyactively contributing on openssl-users mailing list discussion and youbelieve such a change would substantially reduce your participation inthe project.
The majority of the responses so far aren't indicating that this change would result in a reduction in participation.
There are people pointing out they prefer email - but the majority of those people who have responded so far are also watching GitHub issues and are also responding to GitHub issues.
Tim.
