Request : forum migration

[Caetano Veyssières]

Hi,

I'm planning to permanently delete my Google account (let's please not debate that) but mostly, I don't find Google Groups to be a good choice for a community forum. I just found out about the Hugin section in discuss.pxls.us and I'm going to go there for now but it's a shame that the community has to be split in half unnecessarily.

I think the best way to consolidate a community is to migrate the data from an outdated platform (Google Groups) to a more modern one (e.g. Discourse). This has been done several times for other forums and without diving into that subject I can see that tools have been made just for that:

https://glot.io/snippets/ehv0azdgrf

https://github.com/pacharanero/google_group.to_discourse

Personally Discourse is my favorite but almost anything else than Google Groups will do for me (preferably open source)

[Matija Kogoj]

Agreed.

I have also noticed the fragmentation of the community, but I've not noticed there being a central authority. This forum seemed to be the closest to actual technical support even though I'm still unsure who's running the show.

An idea I have been toying with is helping build an awareness of Hugin and aiming for something similar to what Blender 3D has become. I had intended to create a [new] Hugin Support Group on Facebook complete with instructions and tutorials, as exposing more people to the software would expand use and probably bring in more programmers to contribute and refine the code.

Having said that there are two problems with that idea - first I do not yet possess adequate techincal knowledge of the functionality to offer worthwhile advice or solve real issues that would occur. Mostly I'd just help with usage hurdles, and second it could possibly cause problems for the developers as the development structure is not very clear to me. Basically I'm not the best person to lead a group like that.

The software itself is already so good that I prefer it over ptgui! My recent projects that have caused me so much grief would not stitch and export properly on ptgui - I have no idea why, but hugin at least gave me the exrs that you (frequent visitor) know I haven't shut up about for a year now. With a few more refinements it could be made into a truly awesome tool.

So, in my opinion - a dedicated hub for the community to gather along with developers, testers and artists would really go a long way to easing the load on the devs, i believe.

[David W. Jones]

Well, since the original poster wants to move the discussion list from one spying corporation (Google) to another spying corporation (Discourse), doing a "new" support group on the worst of the spying corporations (Facebook) sounds like a no-go from the start.

David W. Jones
gnome...@gmail.com
wandering the landscape of god
http://dancingtreefrog.com

Sent from my Android device with F/LOSS K-9 Mail.

[Margaret Wong]

Please, please not facebook...  I know nothing about Discourse, not having used it.   Why is it felt necessary to go to some other platform when perhaps a rearrangement of the way things are done here might be just as satisfactory.  Please explain what advantages you expect you would get on another platform.  And what disadvantages the new platform has that you already know of.   

I do have a facebook account which I thoroughly dislike but keep due to my contacts who use it. None of them are technically minded people. I know of no FB group that is run in a way that what you hope to be able to achieve.  That is not to say one could not exist.

I have rarely asked questions here as  most of mine get answered by reading other people's questions.  I am always positively surprised by how good the results are. The only area that I have encountered that could do with some improvement is deriving and entering parameters for new lenses. My pitiful experiments on these have not resulted in anything worthwhile.

kind regards

Margaret

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[Caetano Veyssières]

Please explain me how Discourse could be spying on you if you self-host it. Are you sure you're not confusing it with Discord ?

But again, as I said, anything other than Google Groups (and now that it was mentioned, even less facebook) will do for me, as long as it's a forum (so, no live chat or "group" thing). If you prefer some old phpbb to Discourse, I'm very fine with it.

[Caetano Veyssières]

I was emailed to be notified that I all my deleted versions of this previous message were emailed to all subscribers, which can be quite annoying. I'm sorry for that and it was not intended. But at the same time, this further proves that Google Groups is not very adapted for a forum. You can't edit posts, only delete them. Forum software like Discourse or PHPBB would have that possibility.

[J. Schneider*]

Hi,
I have a question about how Disourse or an alternative would be used. My
short seach and wikipedia reading on Discourse didn't answer this.
What would a user have to do to read this forum and write to it? Would
it be manifest as a web page? Would a user have to be a member?
Seemingly there is also an app for mobile devices, but what does it work
like for a Windows computer user?
(At the moment I use simply my e-mail client (Thunderbird) to read the
hugin mailing list and to me this is convenient as it is integrated into
software I use anyway and messages are available without any interaction
from my side.)

Best regards
Joachim

[Caetano Veyssières]

That's a good question. Discourse has mailing list tools and although I don't know if you can perform direct interactions to a thread from your email client, I will look into it when my internet connection comes back to a full bandwidth (next month).
I also believe Discourse allows for anonymous and account-less posting, but I'll confirm or deny that then (unless someone else does before me)
But your question raises another one for me : don't you need a Google account to interact with this group?

[David W. Jones]

Yes, that is why I hate web forums. I have to go there, login. With email, I just get my email as usual and posts are there.

No web forum!

>Best regards
>Joachim



--

[Caetano Veyssières]

Wait, I don't understand. You just confirmed that you need a google account, so this means you can't post without logging into Google. How does that require less steps than logging into any other service?

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

On Sunday, 21 July 2019 at 7:09:18 -1000, David W. Jones wrote:
> On July 21, 2019 5:12:13 AM HST, "J. Schneider*" <j-sc...@gmx.de> wrote:
>> Hi,
>> I have a question about how Disourse or an alternative would be used.
>> My
>> short seach and wikipedia reading on Discourse didn't answer this.
>> What would a user have to do to read this forum and write to it? Would
>> it be manifest as a web page? Would a user have to be a member?
>> Seemingly there is also an app for mobile devices, but what does it
>> work
>> like for a Windows computer user?
>> (At the moment I use simply my e-mail client (Thunderbird) to read the
>> hugin mailing list and to me this is convenient as it is integrated
>> into
>> software I use anyway and messages are available without any
>> interaction
>> from my side.)
>
> Yes, that is why I hate web forums. I have to go there, login. With
> email, I just get my email as usual and posts are there.

+1

I can't speak for David, but I have my Google mail forwarded to a sane
email system, and that's where I read it, just like any other mail.
And that's how I answer, like now. If I want to send a new message, I
send it to hugi...@googlegroups.com.

We saw a couple of days ago the pain of using the Google web
interface, when somebody sent four messages without knowing it.

Greg
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[Terry Duell]

Mail from hugin-ptx is automatically sent to my conventional mail system,
and I respond using my conventional mailer to the hugin-ptx email address,
no need whatsoever to log into Google.
I see no reason to change from the current system which is simple and
convenient to use.

Cheers,
--
Regards,
Terry Duell

[Caetano Veyssières]

Speak for yourself. I find it neither simple nor convenient. If you use it only through your email client, it means you never search for existing answers to your questions, which deflects the purpose of a forum. The only reason I see for using it this way is if you only give help and never ask for it.

[Lukas Jirkovsky]

I'm with you on that. I prefer mailing list interface much more than
any kind of web forum or anything than requires more than a simple
mail client.

Lukas

[Frederic Da Vitoria]

I too use a mail client and I wouldn't want this to become impossible.

2019-07-22 9:51 UTC+02:00, 'Caetano Veyssières' via hugin and other
free panoramic software <hugi...@googlegroups.com>:

> Speak for yourself. I find it neither simple nor convenient. If you use it
> only through your email client, it means you never search for existing
> answers to your questions, which deflects the purpose of a forum. The only
> reason I see for using it this way is if you only give help and never ask
> for it.

That's why it is nice to have a web page to perform searches. But then
a mail archive on the web will offer the same function. Plus I keep an
archive of the mails I find interesting (even the Hugin mails) and can
search in my archive even when I am unable to connect to the Internet.
You can search google groups for Hugin posts. Would a forum give
better search results? I am not quite sure of this. More focused, yes,
with less irrelevant answers. But using Google's search engine with
it's tricks has it's advantages too.

I understand wanting to get away from Google. But we must be careful
not to lose important things. So I am OK with migrating to a forum, as
long as the forum offers the same mailing as Google groups. Some
forums for example only send mails if you explicitly subscribe to a
thread. This would definitely be bad for me. I want to get all mails
from all threads, without any action from me.

--
Frederic Da Vitoria
(davitof)

Membre de l'April - « promouvoir et défendre le logiciel libre » -
http://www.april.org

[Marius Loots]

Hallo Everyone,

About the various options that has been proposed:

1. Facebook is not a migration option. It is not a platform for
discussion, but rather a gathering area. Think townhall gathering
with gate keepers who has a large influence over not only who is
allowed in, but also who sees what. Search is not a functionality
of the environment. If someone wants to use that to expand the
exposure and use of Hugin, by all means go ahead. I would probably
join such a group but it won't be my main place to look for help.

2. An online forum to replace the mailing list. Place an extra hurdle
in front of my participation. I have to go see if there is any
activity, as opposed to a mailing list where it is immediate. I did
visit the online discussion forum mentioned earlier in this thread.
It is less active and they don't seem to be aware of both the
history of the software, or the existence of this group. Not sure
how that is possible.

3. Current mailing list. I immediately see any activity. I can right
now access all material from 2009 onwards, prior to that in my
email archive. I am not diligent enough to delete unwanted
material, but do from time to time delete technical threads to do
with compiling, or platform specific discussions. And I can
efficiently search my email, offline and permanently.

Monday, July 22, 2019, 11:25:58 AM, you wrote:

Frederic> I too use a mail client and I wouldn't want this to become impossible.

Frederic> 2019-07-22 9:51 UTC+02:00, 'Caetano Veyssières' via hugin and other
Frederic> free panoramic software <hugi...@googlegroups.com>:

>> Speak for yourself. I find it neither simple nor convenient. If you use it
>> only through your email client, it means you never search for existing
>> answers to your questions, which deflects the purpose of a forum. The only
>> reason I see for using it this way is if you only give help and never ask
>> for it.

Frederic> That's why it is nice to have a web page to perform searches. But then
Frederic> a mail archive on the web will offer the same function. Plus I keep an
Frederic> archive of the mails I find interesting (even the Hugin mails) and can
Frederic> search in my archive even when I am unable to connect to the Internet.
Frederic> You can search google groups for Hugin posts. Would a forum give
Frederic> better search results? I am not quite sure of this. More focused, yes,
Frederic> with less irrelevant answers. But using Google's search engine with
Frederic> it's tricks has it's advantages too.

Frederic> I understand wanting to get away from Google. But we must be careful
Frederic> not to lose important things. So I am OK with migrating to a forum, as
Frederic> long as the forum offers the same mailing as Google groups. Some
Frederic> forums for example only send mails if you explicitly subscribe to a
Frederic> thread. This would definitely be bad for me. I want to get all mails
Frederic> from all threads, without any action from me.

Frederic> --
Frederic> Frederic Da Vitoria
Frederic> (davitof)

Frederic> Membre de l'April - « promouvoir et défendre le logiciel libre » -
Frederic> http://www.april.org




Groetnis
Marius
mailto:mlo...@medic.up.ac.za
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[Marius Loots]

Hallo Everyone,

About the various options that has been proposed:

1. Facebook is not a migration option. It is not a platform for
discussion, but rather a gathering area. Think townhall gathering
with gate keepers who has a large influence over not only who is
allowed in, but also who sees what. Search is not a functionality
of the environment. If someone wants to use that to expand the
exposure and use of Hugin, by all means go ahead. I would probably
join such a group but it won't be my main place to look for help.

2. An online forum to replace the mailing list. Place an extra hurdle
in front of my participation. I have to go see if there is any
activity, as opposed to a mailing list where it is immediate. I did
visit the online discussion forum mentioned earlier in this thread.
It is less active and they don't seem to be aware of both the
history of the software, or the existence of this group. Not sure
how that is possible.

3. Current mailing list. I immediately see any activity. I can right
now access all material from 2009 onwards, prior to that in my
email archive. I am not diligent enough to delete unwanted
material, but do from time to time delete technical threads to do
with compiling, or platform specific discussions. And I can
efficiently search my email, offline and permanently.

Monday, July 22, 2019, 11:25:58 AM, you wrote:

Frederic> I too use a mail client and I wouldn't want this to become impossible.

Frederic> 2019-07-22 9:51 UTC+02:00, 'Caetano Veyssières' via hugin and other
Frederic> free panoramic software <hugi...@googlegroups.com>:

>> Speak for yourself. I find it neither simple nor convenient. If you use it
>> only through your email client, it means you never search for existing
>> answers to your questions, which deflects the purpose of a forum. The only
>> reason I see for using it this way is if you only give help and never ask
>> for it.

[Caetano Veyssières]

J. Schneider* To get back to the question of whether Discourse can be used as a mailing list, a quick search led me to this: https://discourse.julialang.org/t/discourse-as-a-mailing-list/57 and the first line of the wikipedia article says "Discourse is an open source Internet forum and mailing list management software"

I still need more time to dive in that subject to see how it could work as an alternative to the Google Group.

Marius Loots

>> An online forum to replace the mailing list. [...] I have to go see if there is any activity

Not sure I get you. Every forum I've ever used has an email notification system.

For Discourse you can configure it to send you an email with various triggers:

- a new topic or a new post in a selected category (Discourse forums are divided in categories, e.g. Optimization, Stitching, etc...  You can select all the categories to be notified of all activity on the forum)

- a new post in a topic you're subscribed to (by default, if you post in a topic, you are automatically subscribed to it but you can change that option and also manually subscribe to or unsubscribe from any topic)

- a new post that mentions your username (Discourse uses the "@" symbol followed by a username to trigger notification to a specific user)

- a new topic tagged with a tag you selected (Discourse topics can have tags, e.g. #cpfind, which are a metadata to the topic and can be used with various features, incl. notifications)

[Frederic Da Vitoria]

2019-07-22 15:00 UTC+02:00, 'Caetano Veyssières' via hugin and other
free panoramic software <hugi...@googlegroups.com>:

>>> An online forum to replace the mailing list. [...] I have to go see if
> there is any activity
>
> Not sure I get you. Every forum I've ever used has an email notification
> system.
> For Discourse you can configure it to send you an email with various
> triggers:
> - a new topic or a new post in a selected category (Discourse forums are
> divided in categories, e.g. Optimization, Stitching, etc... You can select
>
> all the categories to be notified of all activity on the forum)
> - a new post in a topic you're subscribed to (by default, if you post in a
> topic, you are automatically subscribed to it but you can change that
> option and also manually subscribe to or unsubscribe from any topic)
> - a new post that mentions your username (Discourse uses the "@" symbol
> followed by a username to trigger notification to a specific user)
> - a new topic tagged with a tag you selected (Discourse topics can have
> tags, e.g. #cpfind, which are a metadata to the topic and can be used with
> various features, incl. notifications)

If Discourse can be set this way, fine. I don't see any technical
reason why forums could not do it this way. But one of the communities
I used to be part of several years ago switched to a forum (I can't
remember which) and I could not find a way to get a mail for each
post. I don't know if it was impossible or if the admins just did not
configure it this way. Anyhow, I drifted away from them and I have no
doubt this was the reason I did so.

--
Frederic Da Vitoria
(davitof)

Membre de l'April - « promouvoir et défendre le logiciel libre » -

http://www.april.org

[RizThon]

I'm using a discourse site and I see in the settings "Enable mailing list mode".

It seems to be possible to reply or even create new threads through email:

-https://meta.discourse.org/t/set-up-reply-via-email-support/14003
- https://meta.discourse.org/t/configuring-reply-via-email-e-mail/42026

It also seems to be possible to import your google group emails data to discourse:
https://meta.discourse.org/t/importing-mailing-lists-mbox-listserv-google-groups-emails/79773

Something nice with discourse is that you can create categories and then only ask to get notifications from specific categories (people need of course to use the correct categories when posting).

The discourse interface is from my point of view way better than google groups, but migrating to discourse will probably be quite some work and a change for all people used to the mailing list

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

On Tuesday, 23 July 2019 at 9:41:36 +0800, RizThon wrote:
>
> The discourse interface is from my point of view way better than
> google groups, but migrating to discourse will probably be quite
> some work and a change for all people used to the mailing list

Yes, I was thinking something like this. My feeling is "if it ain't
broke, don't fix it". I've seen lots of suggestions of how to
migrate, and clearly they will all involve effort. I haven't seen
what's so wrong with Google. Yes, they're not my favourites either,
but they're not that bad. And I've seen at least one forum die after
migrating to a new platform.

[David W. Jones]

On July 22, 2019 3:50:12 PM HST, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <groo...@gmail.com> wrote:
>On Tuesday, 23 July 2019 at 9:41:36 +0800, RizThon wrote:
>>
>> The discourse interface is from my point of view way better than
>> google groups, but migrating to discourse will probably be quite
>> some work and a change for all people used to the mailing list
>
>Yes, I was thinking something like this. My feeling is "if it ain't
>broke, don't fix it". I've seen lots of suggestions of how to
>migrate, and clearly they will all involve effort. I haven't seen
>what's so wrong with Google. Yes, they're not my favourites either,
>but they're not that bad. And I've seen at least one forum die after
>migrating to a new platform.
>
>Greg

There's no reason to use any kind of forum software. I've had encounters with Discourse. It is frequently described in derogatory terms. Just like Gooole, it also tracks users throughout the web, wherever a Discourse forum is used.

Mail archives are a different thing entirely, and searchable via many search engines, not just Google.

No change to a 'forum' is needed.

[Caetano Veyssières]

David W. Jones

>> It is frequently described in derogatory terms. Just like Gooole, it also tracks users throughout the web, wherever a Discourse forum is used.

Again, I'm not seeing any proof. Could you provide a link or 2 to confirm that? Personally all I find is that Discourse doesn't track any data of external forums except for the forum's url and the Discourse version used. Data is tracked only internally for the admins to manage trust levels and other admin features.

[David W. Jones]

On July 23, 2019 5:12:18 AM HST, "'Caetano Veyssières' via hugin and other free panoramic software" <hugi...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>David W. Jones
>>> It is frequently described in derogatory terms. Just like Gooole, it
>
>also tracks users throughout the web, wherever a Discourse forum is
>used.
>
>Again, I'm not seeing any proof. Could you provide a link or 2 to
>confirm
>that? Personally all I find is that Discourse doesn't track any data

><https://meta.discourse.org/t/question-about-the-extent-of-data-tracking-pseudo-ai/105740/2>

>
>of external forums except for the forum's url and the Discourse version
>
>used. Data is tracked only internally for the admins to manage trust
>levels
>and other admin features.

Ok. I still see no need or benefit to switching to a web forum of any sort. They (including Discourse) are clunky, inconvenient and completely unnecessary.

[Gunter Königsmann]

There are many solutions to the problem how or where to host a forum. Every of these solutions has drawbacks.

If you use Google they will most probably know where you are and that you are a reader of hugin-ptx. But I guess they will know that, anyway, as many websites are hosted by Google or have Google analytics or are transferred over a Google fiber.

If you just want to have an account less a mailman account would be an account, too...

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[Caetano Veyssières]

Great! Mailman, I'm fine with this.

Look, we may disagree on some points but I haven't seen anyone say that the Google Groups web interface is great or as good as other web-based support platforms, so if most of you prefer email and account-less interactions to a forum website, I'm okay with this, but I would much rather use and promote free and open source software which is also more specifically dedicated for this task.
Hopefully it would also require less work for data migration?
But either way, Hugin is Foss and G. Groups kinda sucks so if we keep it this way, eventually we can either expect other pesky users like me to ask for a change or see an online community split in multiple platforms, which can be good for very large communities, but this is Hugin. I think a cohesive community is better here.

[Caetano Veyssières]

Wait, I just remembered that mailman is not account-less and that's precisely what you were saying so, my bad. I need to take more time to dive into the subject to find the alternative that would meet as little opposition as possible. 'til then you may not hear from me, because I don't like to debate by guessing.

[David W. Jones]

For what it's worth, hugin-ptx is the only mailing list I participate in that *doesn't* use mailman.

[Bruno Postle]

Some background: originally hugin-ptx was on a mailman server, but eventually had to move. We looked around, but there were no good options. At the time Google groups allowed us to add subscribers without them needing Google accounts, so we went for that. The mailing list aspect works as expected and is very reliable.

For myself, I'm on a number of mailing lists, and if these were all separate web based forums there is no way I would be able to follow them all.

--
Bruno

[Jim Watters]

Completely agree. Also as long so the web / app interface produced
threaded email that looked no different than what we are currently
receiving I don't care what that part looks like.

Don't want to start receive replies that are no longer part of the
thread. or a bunch of overhead in the body of the messages.

Jim

[Patrick David]

Howdy all!

I'm Pat David from the PIXLS.US community (mentioned earlier in this thread by the OP) and a member of the GIMP team.

First, I just want to send my thanks and admiration for the Hugin team and community.  I've been using Hugin for a long time and absolutely appreciate all the hard work and effort put into the project.  Thank you!

Second, I had heard about this thread from one of the members over at the PIXLS.US community and wanted to stop by and introduce myself and the community.  For anyone that doesn't know I founded PIXLS.US about 5 years ago now as a way for Free Software users that were into photography to get together around photography specifically.  There were a ton of other forums that were tied to specific software projects but nothing that catered to photography overall (and where all the users were using Free Software).

What this meant was that project-specific forums might have good information that could benefit a wider audience, but it wasn't being seen if someone wasn't on that particular mailing list or forum.  I thought it might be beneficial for all of the projects if users and developers could communicate in a central place for both greater visibility and cross-communication. So far this appears to be working well as we've got a wonderful community with all levels of skill and knowledge able to easily share with each other.

We're able to give back to projects by helping with the forum/mailing lists, websites, and other infrastructure as it's needed (it's another way for us to give back to projects we love outside of code or just cash).  I wanted to help remove the concern of webhosting, forums, PR, marketing, etc. from projects if they didn't want to deal with it themselves (or just help wherever we can if they do).

---

I don't think we've formally approached the Hugin project, but consider this an invitation!  Many of us in the community already use Hugin and I think it'd be wonderful to have even more knowledgable users join us.

We do happen to use Discourse and I worry that there might be some misunderstandings about it based on some things I've read in this thread.  We own the entire stack of software for the community. This includes the website, the forum, and other infrastructure like raw.pixls.us for raw files. There's no corporation behind our site.

There are other services for commenting and communicating that have similar names, so I didn't want them to get mixed up.  Disqus is a commenting system that sort-of tracks you around the web, Discord is a voice/chat system.  *Discourse* is a Free/Open Source forum software that we host ourselves. :)

The beauty of this arrangement is that we own the entire stack of user information and communication platform.  Not Google, FB, or anyone else.

Another nice thing about the Discourse forum is that you can interact with it entirely through email and without having to visit the website if you want.  I don't have the function turned on to _start_ new threads from email yet, but if it's something the community here wanted I'd be more than happy to get it setup.

I invite anyone to come by and create an account if you haven't already at https://discuss.pixls.us.  Feel free to ping me with any questions and I'm happy to make myself available to test things out.

[Yuval Levy]

On Wed, 2019-08-21 at 14:51 -0700, Patrick David wrote:
> Howdy all!

Hello and goodbye.

I've retired from Hugin for years. Lack of time. When I saw this
thread, I had a few thought that I first kept to myself. After all, we
want the project to thrive beyond the lives of individual contributors.

TLDR: Discourse is IMHO a defective piece of junk. My opinion is the
result of joining a community that unfortunately communicates mostly on
Discourse. [https://discuss.linuxcontainers.org/c/lxd]

The deal killer for me is that the "simulated" mailing list behaviour
is useless. The HTML mails are unreadable on mobile devices, and are
top-posted, making reading/following extremely cumbersome. I can
criticize further, but this is not a Discourse development list.

SOME MORE THOUGHTS FOR THOSE WHO CARE

* there is a real concern: GoogleGroups are stagnating and Google is
known for pulling the plug rather quickly on tools that do not fit
their portfolio. At some point in the future, near or far, this group
will need a new home. For now, it can just be a low burner backup plan
discussion.

* there is another real concern: many of us, and particularly people
who have contributed to Hugin for a long time, have a very strong
preference for e-mail based communication. Mailing list. There are
good reasons for that. HTML and the web are great for websites, blogs,
bug trackers, but IMHO anything that I have seen so far for group
communication that is web-based is inefficient.

* nothing prevents community members or third parties from collecting
the wisdom from the flow of communication and put it in nicely designed
websites, blogs, wikis, etc.

* with regard to PIXLS.US: it *looks* good, but how viable is it? how
do you pay for all of this? this community has experience with
Sourceforge, the original home of Hugin (that still hosts the source
code and website) being sold to Slashdot Media and monetized in
abhorrent ways. Google may be a big advertising beast, but at least it
is not desperate nor stupid enough to covertly add spyware to hosted
software
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/06/under-new-management-sourceforge-moves-to-put-badness-in-past/

> I don't think we've formally approached the Hugin project, but
> consider this an invitation! Many of us in the community already use
> Hugin and I think it'd be wonderful to have even more knowledgable
> users join us.

You are welcome to write articles and blogs about Hugin like any other
third party. Do not take it personally: I will not join PIXLS.US. It
is a neatly designed publication, but it is just that, a publication.
What I need is a forge. Sourceforge used to have mailing lists.
Github was promising before it was taken over by Microsoft. Right now,
*if* Hugin has to move anywhere, my recommendation would be to move to
Gitlab. And maybe by the time Hugin moves to Gitlab, it will have
mailing list functionality.
https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/4272

Already now, Gitlab's issues tracker has a much better email interface
than Discourse.

Last but not least: do not change what is working. Change for
change's sake is a waste of resources. Only change if the change
brings some advantage, or if the change is inevitable (such as the
pending loss of an existing resource). I have not seen a valid
argument to move away from Google-Groups; so even if I do not like
Google, I vote to stay here until Google turns the lights off, and to
reconsider the real concerns when Google shuts down, or when a tool
becomes available that does not sacrifice proper email functionality
and does not add burden the group's admins.

Yuv

P.S.: my interest in LXD is because early July my Sandy Bridge PC
broke down on a weekend and I absolutely needed a working PC on Monday.
I was waiting for Ryzen 3000 and the only CPU available at the local
computer store was the 3900x. Running a lawyer's desk on 12 cores is a
bit of a waste. So I have virtualized the metal with KVM and I am
slicing up further one of the VMs with LXD for different applications.
With so much idling computing power, I intend to use some seasonal
downtime to process years and terabytes of pictures and videos. Tons
of other virtualized applications at different stage of implenentation,
including a complete Android and F-Droid build chain / store. A backup
solution for my public cloud presence. Hardened Nextcloud for my
clients. Running a mailing list in one container on the side will not
be much of an effort.

[Pat David]

Hello and goodbye.

Leaving already? :)  Or was that more of a "goodbye, please leave"?

Just to clarify, I'm not pushing any change here and I certainly understand your concerns.  Your points are certainly valid.

I am merely extending the offer if you'd like.  In fact, outside of the ML discussion please note that my offer is to help out if we can with other infrastructure needs as well!  Want a new website or some other help with any other type of management please don't hesitate to ask. We'll do our best to help out!

Small side note - the infrastructure is paid for by the community donations or by myself if needed.  I haven't had to float any costs personally in a few years, but am quite happy to do so in perpetuity.  It's a small price for the value I receive from all of the projects that I get to use! (also the costs aren't too bad, around $40usd/month - less than an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription for all of the similar programs).

I happen to agree that Gitlab would be a fantastic option for migration (hosting yourselves I would imagine?).

Either way, thanks again for this wonderful project!

--

https://patdavid.net
GPG: 66D1 7CA6 8088 4874 946D  18BD 67C7 6219 89E9 57AC

[Yuval Levy]

On Wed, 2019-08-21 at 20:25 -0500, Pat David wrote:
> Leaving already? :)

Did I ever come back?

> Or was that more of a "goodbye, please leave"?

That would have been inappropriate. I hope you did not understand it
that way.


> Just to clarify

I did not want to embark into spending time I do not have.

I can sympathize with the OP, and at the same time criticize him for
- not advocating properly for Discourse, resulting in misunderstanding
(it is junk, but it is still Open Source in letter and in spirit)
- expecting others (read: the list-admin) to do the work that he
himself should be contributing if this is so important to him

I can also sympathize with many list-oldtimer who reacted
conservatively to the half-baked proposal, all while criticizing some
of them for the FUD / conspiracy theories thrown at the OP.

> Small side note - the infrastructure is paid for

The cost of infrastructure are negligible. Time is the scarce non-
renewable resource. And you do not live on thin air and water either,
I dare to assume?

> I happen to agree that Gitlab would be a fantastic option for
> migration (hosting yourselves I would imagine?).

Would have to analyze the different hosting options before expressing
an informed opinion, including hosting with the original creators;
hosting with an opportunistic third party; self-hosting on a generic
cloud instance; self-hosting in somebody's basement, etc. There are so
many factors to consider, a quick answer is neither possible nor
desirable. Self-hosting in the basement is surely a starting point, if
only to learn about the details involved to be able to make a
reasonable and viable decision.

I was responsible for the migration of Hugin from SVN to Hg. In
hindsight I regret not pushing more for git, but back then Windows-
support in git was lacking, and back then the benefit of moving to a
distributed VCS outweighted the effort (and there were no real
drawbacks).

I was also responsible for the migration of the bug tracker from
SourceForge to Launchpad. Still an OK tool for bug tracking. Github
and Gitlab would be a better choice today, but the gap is not
sufficient to justify the effort IMHO. Again, back then the
cost/benefit analysis was positive.

I believe that different circumstances call for different solutions. I
run some services out of my server cabinet; run other services out of
the public cloud; source other services from intermediaries; and even
mix and match any of the above. Redundancy is more often good than
bad. The more, the merrier. In that sense, I welcome your initiatives
like I welcome any other initiative and contribution.

The reason for me not to join is that Discourse does not add benefit to
developers, but it does add cost. Using it is more time-consuming than
a mailing list.

So again, at 00:45AM before a work-loaded Friday: Hello and goodbye,
was nice to meet you. I look forward to read curated content on
Pixls.us when I have the time, but I will not spend time trying to
weed out the wheat from the chaff in the discuss section. One of the
problems of many-to-many web based communication tools is that it is
not possible to discern the quality of the advice without significant
time investment. Stackoverflow has a partial solution that is not bad
but still more difficult to follow / participate than mailing lists. I
still find curated collections superior, and even one-to-many blogs
that enable the reader to reasonably ascertain the quality/expertise of
the author and deliberately decide to follow their writing/publishing.

Happy to continue the conversation when time allows.

Yuv

[Bruno Postle]

Thanks for the offer of help, as ever changes are likely to be forced on us at some point.

I'd like to reiterate to anyone on the list that hasn't already investigated, that pixls.us has transformed the world of free software photography, this is a great artistic and technical community.

--
Bruno