Proposal for using a single mailing list [was Re: One end-user distribution?]

[Roger Dingledine <arma@mit.edu>]

People are sending mail and failing to get it to everybody involved. I
propose that we all subscribe to seul-pub@seul.org (send mail to
majordomo@seul.org with body 'subscribe seul-pub'), and carry on the
discussion from there.

SEUL is a relatively neutral organization -- we want to benefit end-users in
any way we possibly can. Coordinating distribution projects is a good way to
help, and we're willing to endorse both a redhat-based distrib and a
debian-based distrib if that looks like the wisest action.

Project Independence has some very good arguments in favor of Redhat.
Most importantly, Redhat has already made good progress towards being
end-user-friendly and it has a lot of mind/market share, which means it's
closer to the end-users already.

On the other hand, using Debian as a base is more 'true' to the free software
community; in addition, it's much easier to get closer to the actual
developers, and make an immediate difference in the distribution itself.
(Nils Lohner, SPI Treasurer, has been trying to get me to be a Debian
developer for several weeks now, so I can package the seul-edu software
(www.seul.org/edu/) as deb's.)

The seul-pub list is archived at
http://www.seul.org/archives/seul/pub/Apr-1999/threads.html

We should definitely look into working together, since I have a lot of
resources and people volunteering to help with SEUL and I often don't
have time to manage and organize all the volunteers. Certainly we can
work together in the areas of advocacy/publicity documents, educational
software development, end-user resources (lists of links and summaries),
etc.

Thanks,
--Roger