ann: PLUG-applications mailing list

[Kurt Granroth]

On Mar 21, 2006, at 4:06 PM, der.hans wrote:
> PLUG announces a new mailing list for discussing Free Software
> applications.
>
> This list is for questions, answers, and discussion of Free Software
> desktop applications. Examples would be Firefox, Thunderbird,
> OpenOffice.org, The Gimp, Gnome and KDE. Any Free Software or Open
> Source software would be considered on topic, regardless of the  
> platform
> (operating system) on which it runs.

Hmm... has the discussion of non-Linux based free software gotten so  
heavy that it needs another list to handle the flow?  I hadn't noticed.

Personally, I am the type that prefer much fewer mailing lists and  
consolidating as much as possible.  I remember the days when I was  
subscribed to over 50 mailing lists (not an exaggeration) and I don't  
look back at that fondly.  My rule of thumb for creating new lists  
was always:

a) if there was frequent talk on subjects that didn't mesh at all  
with the main topic
or
b) if there was a massive amount of talk on subjects that were  
subsets of the main topic

For instance, in the beginning, there was the 'kde' mailing list.   
When development started picking up, 'kde-devel' was formed.  There  
was a distinct difference between application and KDE core  
development, though, so eventually kde-core-devel was formed.  And  
then the Konqueror (kfm at the time) development really started  
crowding out other topics so kfm-devel was formed.  And so on and so  
forth.

In my opinion (which isn't as humble as it likely should be), talk  
about apps like Firefox, OO and the like are valid topics on this  
list regardless of their platform.  So subsets they may be... but the  
talk surrounding them is hardly overwhelming.

But that's me.  I've been known to have contrary opinions now and  
again :-)

Kurt