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In the spirit of the open source movement, the PostgreSQL community has always tried to operate transparently and fairly, and provide resources for people to ad

In the spirit of the open source movement, the PostgreSQL community has always tried to operate transparently and fairly, and provide resources for people to adopt, use, and promote PostgreSQL. We continuously look to improve and are very much open to feedback (look no further than the discussions on our mailing lists)! Perhaps I am just a little too young but I do find the use of mailing lists in some of the older open source projects to be a bit cumbersome in 2021. I know there are advantages to them and their semi decentralized nature is a feature but I sure do find them difficult to interact with. Regardless of the above I do hope they come to a amicable solution and it is interesting to me to find that Postgres trade marks are held by a Canadian entity.

jimhefferon 5y ago
Cumbersone in what way?
- gaudat 5y ago
  Worse UX to this generation of developers than say Discord or other IMs I guess.
  - tempest_ 5y ago
    I don't think discord or slack is a great alternative as it is very ephemeral (and not really open source / decentralized) but I do think interacting with a mailing list is worse than a threaded forum type layout.
    - wbl 5y ago
      Email has had threading since before I was born.
      - munk-a 5y ago
        Email has never had explicit threading - email has a bunch of usage habits that many clients interpret as attempted threading (which often results in threads of steam receipts in my gmail webview FYI). There are a number of clients that are particularly good at respecting the specific approaches to threading used by mailing lists and that come with a plethora of powerful keyboard interactions to make browsing a whole bunch of emails trivial. But newer devs may be quite unfamiliar with those options and I don't think it's particularly easy information to learn... especially if your webmail has "just worked" for most other uses.
        staticassertion 5y ago
        You've been downvoted but I believe your post is accurate. At least with regards to IMAP and any RFCs I've read myself, though I'm open to hearing from others. Much of email is absolutely implemented in client-side 'de-facto' ways. edit: I see now in the RFC that there is a description.
        euank 5y ago
        > Email has never had explicit threading The "In-Reply-To" header is described in rfc2822. It is an explicit header in the RFC that is how you create threads. Every mail client I've used correctly understands how to thread reply-chains using In-Reply-To. The thing you're talking about, steam receipts grouping, is not a feature of email, but a specific feature of gmail's web view which is not mandated by any RFC and indeed is not explicit threading... But there is a real way to thread which is defined in the RFC, and if you use a reasonable email client (aka not gmail), every mailing list's threading will work for you.
    - FractalHQ 5y ago
      Discord is amazing, especially with the advanced search features, and now threads. An open source alternative to discord like the one featured on ShowHN recently would be ideal.
      - exikyut 5y ago
        The only blocking issue is that their success (and subsequent spam/abuse issues) is greater than their focus on open access, to the extent that they formally disallow 3rd party client access. So at the one end of the spectrum with have IMAP/SMTP, in the middle we have things like Telegram (everything's GPL3! The protocol is terrible and here are all the details! Go nuts!)... and at the other end we have Discord: One Protocol, One Allowed Client™®©. Do I use Discord? No. Would I like to use Discord? Yes. Why can't I use Discord? The client is too much for my older laptop. Would I like to use Discord? Yes there are a pile of people on there I'm missing out Can I do anything about it? Yes, I have two options: 1) use https://cancel.fm/ripcord/ https://cancel.fm/ripcord/ until it suffers the same fate as https://github.com/Bios-Marcel/cordless https://github.com/Bios-Marcel/cordless 2) throw the whole thing to the wind until I have better hardware Hmm. You know come to think about it the chances are people with similar interests to myself are probably also stuck on older hardware too and probably won't be using Discord either...
  - howaboutnope 5y ago
    With the amount of people who don't care about the difference between 10ns and 10ms calling themselves developers, I'm sure even Clippy would be the perfect IDE for some of them, so that's not saying much. Apart from the lack of nesting, Discord and other instant messengers are way worse at creating a searchable archive, the best option AFAIK is to export the chat with third-party tools that break the TOS.. an option so bad, it's not even an option.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- elzbardico 5y ago
  Let me say that I am honestly curious too.
- tempest_ 5y ago
  Perhaps I am alone is this (based on the votes) but when I go to https://www.postgresql.org/list/ https://www.postgresql.org/list/ it requires a great deal of clicking to drill down and lets say I eventually end up some where like https://www.postgresql.org/list/pgsql-general/2021-09/ https://www.postgresql.org/list/pgsql-general/2021-09/ I am greeted with a lot "Re:" "No subject" etc. Perhaps what is comes down to is I am trying to interact with a mailing list using a browser which is perhaps unfair. I would say that discovering what is being talked about and the barriers to entry for subscribing/unsubscribing provide way more friction then, lets say a subreddit or even a more classical forum layout.
  - oarsinsync 5y ago
    So the downvotes on your perfectly legitimate comment are absurd, but here we are. To get technical, the problem that you're having isn't that interacting with mailing lists is cumbersome, but rather, interacting with mailing list archives is cumbersome. You're not wrong. Web interfaces for mailing list archives haven't really changed in yonks, and there's little incentive to do so. The only people who use the archives are the people who explicitly do not interact with the list itself. The people who actually use mailing lists, are members of the list itself, and receive the messages in their mailbox. From that point onwards, their interaction with the mailing list is only as cumbersome as their Mail User Agent (email client, MUA). Using a decent MUA that supports threading is step one to having an enjoyable experience with a mailing list. Unfortunately, in 2021, we've regressed from a world where we have depth of options where it comes to MUAs, to where we are now where the vast majority use webmail solutions exclusively. Webmail has definitely improved since the 90s and 00s, but unfortunately not every feature has come along for the ride, making that also tricky. As far as the barriers to entry go, thats subjective. Subscribing to a subreddit requires creating a reddit account. Subscribing to most forums requires signing up with an email address, password, possibly username as well, along with other biographical details (optional in some cases), and validating your email is real. Subscribing to a mailing list requires signing up with an email address and validating your email is real. Anything you're not used to using, is always going to feel more cumbersome. If "happy mailman day" doesn't mean anything to you, you probably haven't had much experience with mailing lists (or have, but much more recent).
anonymousisme 5y ago
Linux has had the LKML for almost three decades. It still works well for them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_kernel_mailing_list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_kernel_mailing_list
- Supermancho 5y ago
  I don't participate in any mailing lists since at least 2008 and I'm pretty sophisticated. What constitutes "works" is that they (Linux Kernel working group) have a very primitive forum (mailing list) wherein there is no recognized pressure to change. People still use HAM radio because they "work" but that's not the optimal way to collaborate. Give it a few more decades.
  - anonymousisme 5y ago
    I've used the LKML to contribute changes, and I'm also an amateur radio operator. I guess that makes me a fossil.
- staticassertion 5y ago
  Does it? I find it really cumbersome. We were just interacting with it the other day and found it annoyingly baroque. There's a lot of assumed knowledge and I've read a fair bit of documentation and have been following Kernel development since before my career. It "works" for the people who it works for and that's it.
  - emeraldd 5y ago
    Ok, what would you suggest in it's place?
    - staticassertion 5y ago
      I don't have to suggest anything in its place. I'm just relaying that I've actually interacted with it for years and have found it cumbersome, and I don't think it's fair to say that it's "worked" as if it hasn't made first-contributions significantly harder for a lot of people. At this point I might suggest Gitlab, but I don't really feel like having a back and forth about what may or may not be ideal about that.
mjw1007 5y ago
It's a shame the PostgreSQL lists dropped off Gmane. That used to be a decent way to read them.

jimhefferon 5y ago

Cumbersone in what way?

gaudat 5y ago
Worse UX to this generation of developers than say Discord or other IMs I guess.
- tempest_ 5y ago
  I don't think discord or slack is a great alternative as it is very ephemeral (and not really open source / decentralized) but I do think interacting with a mailing list is worse than a threaded forum type layout.
  - wbl 5y ago
    Email has had threading since before I was born.
    - munk-a 5y ago
      Email has never had explicit threading - email has a bunch of usage habits that many clients interpret as attempted threading (which often results in threads of steam receipts in my gmail webview FYI). There are a number of clients that are particularly good at respecting the specific approaches to threading used by mailing lists and that come with a plethora of powerful keyboard interactions to make browsing a whole bunch of emails trivial. But newer devs may be quite unfamiliar with those options and I don't think it's particularly easy information to learn... especially if your webmail has "just worked" for most other uses.
      - staticassertion 5y ago
        You've been downvoted but I believe your post is accurate. At least with regards to IMAP and any RFCs I've read myself, though I'm open to hearing from others. Much of email is absolutely implemented in client-side 'de-facto' ways. edit: I see now in the RFC that there is a description.
      - euank 5y ago
        > Email has never had explicit threading The "In-Reply-To" header is described in rfc2822. It is an explicit header in the RFC that is how you create threads. Every mail client I've used correctly understands how to thread reply-chains using In-Reply-To. The thing you're talking about, steam receipts grouping, is not a feature of email, but a specific feature of gmail's web view which is not mandated by any RFC and indeed is not explicit threading... But there is a real way to thread which is defined in the RFC, and if you use a reasonable email client (aka not gmail), every mailing list's threading will work for you.
  - FractalHQ 5y ago
    Discord is amazing, especially with the advanced search features, and now threads. An open source alternative to discord like the one featured on ShowHN recently would be ideal.
    - exikyut 5y ago
      The only blocking issue is that their success (and subsequent spam/abuse issues) is greater than their focus on open access, to the extent that they formally disallow 3rd party client access. So at the one end of the spectrum with have IMAP/SMTP, in the middle we have things like Telegram (everything's GPL3! The protocol is terrible and here are all the details! Go nuts!)... and at the other end we have Discord: One Protocol, One Allowed Client™®©. Do I use Discord? No. Would I like to use Discord? Yes. Why can't I use Discord? The client is too much for my older laptop. Would I like to use Discord? Yes there are a pile of people on there I'm missing out Can I do anything about it? Yes, I have two options: 1) use https://cancel.fm/ripcord/ https://cancel.fm/ripcord/ until it suffers the same fate as https://github.com/Bios-Marcel/cordless https://github.com/Bios-Marcel/cordless 2) throw the whole thing to the wind until I have better hardware Hmm. You know come to think about it the chances are people with similar interests to myself are probably also stuck on older hardware too and probably won't be using Discord either...
- howaboutnope 5y ago
  With the amount of people who don't care about the difference between 10ns and 10ms calling themselves developers, I'm sure even Clippy would be the perfect IDE for some of them, so that's not saying much. Apart from the lack of nesting, Discord and other instant messengers are way worse at creating a searchable archive, the best option AFAIK is to export the chat with third-party tools that break the TOS.. an option so bad, it's not even an option.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
elzbardico 5y ago
Let me say that I am honestly curious too.
tempest_ 5y ago
Perhaps I am alone is this (based on the votes) but when I go to https://www.postgresql.org/list/ https://www.postgresql.org/list/ it requires a great deal of clicking to drill down and lets say I eventually end up some where like https://www.postgresql.org/list/pgsql-general/2021-09/ https://www.postgresql.org/list/pgsql-general/2021-09/ I am greeted with a lot "Re:" "No subject" etc. Perhaps what is comes down to is I am trying to interact with a mailing list using a browser which is perhaps unfair. I would say that discovering what is being talked about and the barriers to entry for subscribing/unsubscribing provide way more friction then, lets say a subreddit or even a more classical forum layout.
- oarsinsync 5y ago
  So the downvotes on your perfectly legitimate comment are absurd, but here we are. To get technical, the problem that you're having isn't that interacting with mailing lists is cumbersome, but rather, interacting with mailing list archives is cumbersome. You're not wrong. Web interfaces for mailing list archives haven't really changed in yonks, and there's little incentive to do so. The only people who use the archives are the people who explicitly do not interact with the list itself. The people who actually use mailing lists, are members of the list itself, and receive the messages in their mailbox. From that point onwards, their interaction with the mailing list is only as cumbersome as their Mail User Agent (email client, MUA). Using a decent MUA that supports threading is step one to having an enjoyable experience with a mailing list. Unfortunately, in 2021, we've regressed from a world where we have depth of options where it comes to MUAs, to where we are now where the vast majority use webmail solutions exclusively. Webmail has definitely improved since the 90s and 00s, but unfortunately not every feature has come along for the ride, making that also tricky. As far as the barriers to entry go, thats subjective. Subscribing to a subreddit requires creating a reddit account. Subscribing to most forums requires signing up with an email address, password, possibly username as well, along with other biographical details (optional in some cases), and validating your email is real. Subscribing to a mailing list requires signing up with an email address and validating your email is real. Anything you're not used to using, is always going to feel more cumbersome. If "happy mailman day" doesn't mean anything to you, you probably haven't had much experience with mailing lists (or have, but much more recent).

anonymousisme 5y ago

Linux has had the LKML for almost three decades. It still works well for them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_kernel_mailing_list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_kernel_mailing_list

Supermancho 5y ago
I don't participate in any mailing lists since at least 2008 and I'm pretty sophisticated. What constitutes "works" is that they (Linux Kernel working group) have a very primitive forum (mailing list) wherein there is no recognized pressure to change. People still use HAM radio because they "work" but that's not the optimal way to collaborate. Give it a few more decades.
- anonymousisme 5y ago
  I've used the LKML to contribute changes, and I'm also an amateur radio operator. I guess that makes me a fossil.
staticassertion 5y ago
Does it? I find it really cumbersome. We were just interacting with it the other day and found it annoyingly baroque. There's a lot of assumed knowledge and I've read a fair bit of documentation and have been following Kernel development since before my career. It "works" for the people who it works for and that's it.
- emeraldd 5y ago
  Ok, what would you suggest in it's place?
  - staticassertion 5y ago
    I don't have to suggest anything in its place. I'm just relaying that I've actually interacted with it for years and have found it cumbersome, and I don't think it's fair to say that it's "worked" as if it hasn't made first-contributions significantly harder for a lot of people. At this point I might suggest Gitlab, but I don't really feel like having a back and forth about what may or may not be ideal about that.

mjw1007 5y ago

It's a shame the PostgreSQL lists dropped off Gmane. That used to be a decent way to read them.