Re: [Evolution] Discourse and the situation for Mailman lists hosted by Gnome.org

[William Oliver <vendor billoblog com>]

On Sun, 2022-10-23 at 13:13 +0100, Pete Biggs wrote:
> The "Powers That Be". Usually reserved for faceless people who make
> decisions for what they perceive to be the best interests of other
> people.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_powers_that_be#:~:text=In%20idiomatic%20English%2C%20%22the%20powers,rather%20than%20a%20subjunctive%20be
> .
>
>
> P.


I don't have much of a dog in this fight.  I subscribed to this list
because I had a specific question (which folk helped me with quickly,
and thanks to all) -- and then just never bothered to unsubscribe.  I
read about 20% of the stuff that rolls by.  I read it as a general
educational experience.

I have worked with a number of professional organizations that are
maintained primarily by volunteer staff and effort.  The "powers that
be" are usually people who are doing a lot of work for free -- even if
the people at the very top are being paid a little.  Sometimes that's
because they believe in a "cause," sometimes because they like being
the expert at something, sometimes because they like being a useful
part of an organization.   But whatever the gain, it's still for free.

For these people (including me in my organizations) one driving issue
is ease of accomplishing whatever task it is they have to do.  If I
spend 20 hours a week working on a committee and I figure out a way to
do the same work in 10 hours, I'm all for it.  And if that savings of
10 hours means that the users have to spend an extra 5 minutes a week
each, that's a sacrifice I'm willing for them to make.  Plus, it's
easier to recruit someone to help if it takes 10 hours of their time
rather than 20.

Another thing that drives this is what the volunteers are comfortable
with.   If I volunteer to run a mailing list (and I do), it's not going
to be on Windows and it *will* be mailman3, because I've installed and
run mailman3 and run it on multiple platforms and I feel comfortable
with it.  So if someone were to come to me in one of my organizations
and say "Hey, Bill, we need to set up a mailing list."  I'd say "Sure,
as long as it's mailman3 on Debian."  But, if I were a fan of
Discourse, what I would say was "Sure, as long as it's on Discourse."

I strongly suspect that the reason this change is being made is not for
some nefarious "control" reason or some bad goal.  I suspect that its
about making it easier for whoever is volunteering to keep this stuff
going.

The solution is almost never for non-volunteers to grumble.  The
solution is usually to become that free labor and be the guy or gal who
says "Sure, as long as it's mailman3."