Re: Centralized Linux announcements/news list?

[Roger Dingledine <arma@seul.org>]

In message <Pine.LNX.4.02.9807292140450.14-100000@schlong.llamaland.org>, scoop@freshmeat.net writes:
>On Wed, 29 Jul 1998, Roger Dingledine wrote:
>
>> Please let me know what you think. Dave (from threepoint) suggested setting
>> up a list so we could discuss this more thoroughly, and actually make
>> something happen.
>
>Well, I think it'd be a pretty simple way to just setup a centralized
>database server with outside access that everybody could just poll using
>their favourite scripting language. For example, if we setup a MySQL
>server accepting outside connections everybody would be able to use Perl
>and PHP to access that server and display the news in any way suitable for
>the site without too many glitches and pre-defined layouts. How's that?

That works, except there are inherent problems with having everything at a
single location, for both technical and political reasons.

>PS: I'll setup a mailinglist in a few minutes if that's okay with you.

Ack. :)

Dave offered to host it as well, and I suspect every other place I contact
will be happy to host it too. I don't want to turn this into a political
choice of which news site gets to host the list that decides where the news
goes.

I think the best thing to do is to get a pretty neutral party to host it.
(Of course, that party might well be Seul, so no doubt I'm adding politics
to the issue as well. Urg.)

http://www.seul.org/archives/seul/announce/Jun-1998/msg00000.html includes:

|A good advantage of this change is that we can
|now act as a more neutral project -- people will stop assuming that
|we're trying to market a 'SEUL' distribution over other distributions,
|so hopefully we'll be in a better position for coordination and
|mediation.

On the other hand, seul isn't a news organization at all, so why would
the list go there? I guess it's both a good point and a bad point.

--Roger