Re: Finding A Listowner

[Rich Kulawiec <rsk @ gsp . org>]

On Thu, Jun 18, 1998 at 05:44:22PM +0200, Eric Thomas wrote:
> You claim to know the de facto  standard better than I do, but you didn't
> even know  that 10  years ago  LISTSERV was  the only  game in  town. 

I "don't know it" because it's not true.  MLM software has existed
in various forms for a lot of years -- long before y'all came along.
Oh, sure, a lot of it was homebrewed and a lot of it disappeared,
and a lot of it *needed* to disappear, but the experiments have been
going on for a long time.

> Since  these products  probably account for  over 90%  of mailing  lists

Do they?

That's a straightforward question.  I have not seen this figure cited
before, here or elsewhere.  Where did it come from?  How was it arrived at?
Is it accurate?

My *subjective* impression, based on continuous monitoring of
the "new-list" mailing list, where new mailing lists are announced,
for the past four years, is that more and more new mailing lists
are using web-based subscription procedures whose backends are either
disguised versions of well-known MLMs, or new ones, or custom code.

Whether that still leaves 90% of them under one of the well-known MLMs
or not, I don't know.  But I'd like see a rigorous explanation of
where that number came from.

> but hey, who am I to argue with a Supreme Court judge?

I've never claimed to be such.  Please stick to the facts.

> As far  as I know,  you've been advising  people to use  Majordomo rather
> than LISTSERV  from way before  RFC2142.

That is correct.  I prefer solutions architected by and for the
Internet community in mutual cooperation.

---Rsk
Rich Kulawiec
rsk@gsp.org