DragonFlyBSD Project Update - colo upgrade, future trends

[Gerald Henriksen]

I note that no one is stepping up to take over the task of trying to
deal with the mailing lists.

But more importantly, while all these suggestions on how to deal with
spam and other issues are interesting and informative they are all
ignoring the main point of the email.

If DragonFly is to continue on as a viable project it needs to attract
new participants who are not just willing to help with running a mail
server, but with actually contributing to the project by porting
software - whether it be just getting packages working, creating new
packages, or getting things like Bluetooth and Nvidia working on
Dragonfly.

Regardless of what we all think, email is dead to the newer generation
of developers and a requirement to use an email list to join DragonFly
merely ensures that any younger developers looking for an opensource
opportunity look elsewhere.

And the reality is there are lots of other opportunties - the problem
isn't just Linux but even Microsoft is now a welcoming opensource
place for many things (they have many opensource projects that welcome
outside contributions, including even now a proper terminal, and none
require joining a mailing list - they are even shortly including
Python with Windows, set up so that typing python at a command line
will automatically take the user to the Windows Store to prompt the
user to install it if necessary).

While not related to opensource, Apple provides a good example of the
death of email and the shift to the web.  For a long time Apple
operated several mailing lists for developers of software that runs on
macOS and a couple of years ago Apple announced that they would be
shutting down the mailing lists and that everyone should move to the
webforums.  There was much angst and wailing, and when Apple didn't
reconsider equivalent mailing lists were set up on groups.io.  Those
mailing lists are dead with no one posting to them.  Everyone moved to
the web and continued on with life because email wasn't as essential
as they all claimed.