Hi everyone, just wanted to give you an update:
First, Yahoo Groups appears to be giving us until the 28th of October (1
more week) until things go READ-ONLY and we can no longer communicate via
the Yahoo Group any longer. That buys us a little bit of a breather to move
to the new system
Second, we've managed to backup the old list. There are nearly 35,000
messages saved, so that's really good news. We're going to work on
migrating these into the new system over the coming weeks. This message
migration may prove to be a little bit of a challenge due to the
differential in format. Of course our own work schedules and lives add to
this challenge of allocating time.
Third, we have the new system up, but have hit a slight snag on the email
system for it. The reason for this is that all the major system developers
in this area are encouraging developers and communities, such as ours, to
use bulk email service providers that both are less flexible and
essentially hand over management to central powers.
This concerns us because we feel that it's very important to control the
email server as much as possible so that we're not beholden to any
conglomerate service provider that might cut us off again like Yahoo Groups
has done. Furthermore, we feel that it's important to maintain flexibility
and safety for our community so that no disinterested, careless or
malicious party can terminate services at their whim. Therefore we're
putting some additional effort into making sure we have our own mail server
in place.
In doing this (with regards to serving our own mail server), please note
that we may be more susceptible to our emails being wrongly flagged as SPAM
or junkmail. This is unfortunate, but we'll do our best to minimize this.
In this effort (and an ongoing effort) for self-sufficiency and security
for our community, we've chosen to not go with pre-rolled and "cloud
hosted" services such as Groups.io and other options. It is essential that
we host our own services on our own servers with trusted partners and
friends who are proficient professionals in their respective fields.
At any rate, we wanted to get everyone an update so that you can know that
we're hard at work to pull something together that will remain safe for now
and into the future.
As requested, I've received a number of requests already to keep various
members in the group. Thank you for those emails.
The new system we're putting in place will require new accounts to be setup
and activated. We have considered options that might facilitate simply
inserting you into the new system, but we've met severe resistance in doing
this. Some have told us that doing this is outright illegal in European
countries, etc. We therefore will have to simply send out an invitation
and ask you to be sure to tell all of your friends or anyone else you may
know on the list to be sure that they sign up.
As before, please continue to advise as to your interest in signing up for
the new system. Also please feel free to ask any questions that you may
have. If you have any special talents, skills or professional experience
that you think could help, please also let us know.
Thanks again for your love, support, and contributions!