status of google groups
Michael Bayer
1. The new groups interface is not very good, and there's absolutely no support of any kind. There used to be some kind of "groups help" group but I can't find it anymore; recently, the "new user notification" system just stopped working. So I had to turn off all moderation on all my groups. The quality of the system is going down and I don't think anyone at Google really cares.
2. Google as a company appears to be moving away from the role as "open source paternal figure" they seemed to embrace a couple of years ago. Google Code is all but dead, replaced by Github and Bitbucket; Google Code Search was recently removed.
3. Google appears to be moving their entire business model towards one designed to compete with Facebook and social media, including a strategy which will unify the user tracking of all their applications, with little or no ability to opt out of this system. These moves have generated a huge amount of media in the past few days, including:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/google-faces-backlash-over-privacy-changes/2012/01/25/gIQAVQnMQQ_story.html
http://pandodaily.com/2012/01/24/larry-page-to-googlers-if-you-dont-get-spyw-work-somewhere-else/
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/115425-google-is-fubar
The mere suggestion that Google is now using Facebook as it's yardstick for success is extremely disturbing. The Facebook model is one that commoditizes clickstreams and data generated from consumers, selling it to the highest bidder; the right to privacy is considered as a hindrance to be worked around in any way possible in pursuit of higher corporate profits. Some background on this is available via RMS's links on this: http://stallman.org/facebook.html
If Google is indeed moving away from being a non-"evil", open source/freedom-friendly company to one that wants to compete with Facebook over who can commoditize their users better, that's not really the kind of place an OSS project should be. Users of SQLAlchemy should not have to sign onto a TOS that's designed to commoditize their data, doesn't adequately protect their privacy, and doesn't really care about the mission of an OSS project.
Right now it seems like a good place to be might be Zed Shaw's Librelist: http://librelist.com/ . Particularly, since it has no corporate agenda, you can actually get a tar.gz of all your messages. Imagine that, you can download your own data - craziness ! The mission statement is exactly in line with what I'm concerned about: "It is a place for FOSS communities to discuss all the things they want without ads, censorship, signup requirements, bundled apps, or requirements that you use any particular email client or service."
I'm concerned that a handful of links within messages point to google groups messages, which will be gone if I close down those lists. I'm also concerned about archive continuity. We do have an archive of everything at http://www.mail-archive.com/sqlal...@googlegroups.com/ , but it seems like it would be time consuming somehow get that archive and a new archive reading from Librelist to be joined into one. But I'm also sort of leaning towards not really caring - it all comes up under a Google search anyway (the irony).
As far as sqlalchemy-devel, I'm also wondering if having a separate list is really worth it. I think the advantage here is that I get the attention of a bunch of you who I'd like to hear from, as opposed to on the main list where I usually don't - though perhaps you folks would respond to development-oriented subject lines on the main list ? This is another question I put out.
As always, thoughts are appreciated !
Randy Syring
I don't think I'd worry about porting the archives. Leave the old group there and put a link on the new list indicating that archives prior to <list start date> are at the google groups site.
I much prefer having the dev list. The user list is too high volume, I don't subscribe. But I always read the stuff that comes to the development list.
Thats my $.02.
--------------------------------------------- Randy Syring Development & Executive Director Level 12 Technologies (formerly Intelicom) Direct: 502-276-0459 Office: 502-212-9913 Intelicom is now Level 12 Technologies, learn more about our name change. Please update your address book with my new email address. Principled People, Technology that Works
Michael Bayer
On Jan 26, 2012, at 1:42 PM, Randy Syring wrote:
>
> I don't think I'd worry about porting the archives. Leave the old group there and put a link on the new list indicating that archives prior to <list start date> are at the google groups site.
well my plan was just to leave links up to the Mail Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/sqlal...@googlegroups.com/ and GMane: http://dir.gmane.org/gmane.comp.python.sqlalchemy.user . (I could probably get an mbox file from one of them too). I don't want people linking out to google groups itself anymore.
Michael Trier
Not sure if I want to move on this, but my thinking of late is that Google Groups is becoming less of an appropriate venue for open source discussion. I'll go through my reasoning:
I'm concerned that a handful of links within messages point to google groups messages, which will be gone if I close down those lists. I'm also concerned about archive continuity. We do have an archive of everything at http://www.mail-archive.com/sqlal...@googlegroups.com/ , but it seems like it would be time consuming somehow get that archive and a new archive reading from Librelist to be joined into one. But I'm also sort of leaning towards not really caring - it all comes up under a Google search anyway (the irony).
As far as sqlalchemy-devel, I'm also wondering if having a separate list is really worth it. I think the advantage here is that I get the attention of a bunch of you who I'd like to hear from, as opposed to on the main list where I usually don't - though perhaps you folks would respond to development-oriented subject lines on the main list ? This is another question I put out.
Michael Trier
http://michaeltrier.com/
jason kirtland
Mike,
As far as sqlalchemy-devel, I'm also wondering if having a separate list is really worth it. I think the advantage here is that I get the attention of a bunch of you who I'd like to hear from, as opposed to on the main list where I usually don't - though perhaps you folks would respond to development-oriented subject lines on the main list ? This is another question I put out.
I'd appreciate a separate group for this. Although I subscribe to the non-devel list I don't pay much attention to it (I know I'm part of the problem). I do read everything said on this one and like to provide input because I know that's what you expect.
Gaëtan de Menten
+1 from me too for a separate list for the same reasons.
As for migrating to another list provider, I don't feel any urge to
move, but I don't mind if you do move. That's really up to you.
--
Gaëtan de Menten
Shannon -jj Behrens
Ben Bangert forwarded me this email, and since I'm a Googler these
days, I figured I should reply:
On Jan 26, 10:14 am, Michael Bayer <mike...@zzzcomputing.com> wrote:
> Not sure if I want to move on this, but my thinking of late is that Google Groups is becoming less of an appropriate venue for open source discussion. I'll go through my reasoning:
>
> 1. The new groups interface is not very good, and there's absolutely no support of any kind. There used to be some kind of "groups help" group but I can't find it anymore; recently, the "new user notification" system just stopped working. So I had to turn off all moderation on all my groups. The quality of the system is going down and I don't think anyone at Google really cares.
time there is a major refactoring of a project, there are bound to be
some bugs, and there are bound to be features that people won't like.
I apologize for that. If you can help me understand your exact
complaints, I'll see what I can do about filing bugs. It's tough to
provide free support for a project that gets as much traffic as Google
Groups, but, as I said, I'll see what I can do.
> 2. Google as a company appears to be moving away from the role as "open source paternal figure" they seemed to embrace a couple of years ago.
the company has gone up. Almost all of the code that I write gets
open sourced. As far as I know, Android is the only large, modern,
successful open source phone platform.
> Google Code is all but dead, replaced by Github and Bitbucket;
"all but dead". It's under active development, and many of us
Googlers host all of our open source, Google stuff there. By the way,
it works with Git and Mercurial too.
> Google Code Search was recently removed.
>
> 3. Google appears to be moving their entire business model towards one designed to compete with Facebook and social media, including a strategy which will unify the user tracking of all their applications, with little or no ability to opt out of this system. These moves have generated a huge amount of media in the past few days, including:
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/google-faces-backla...http://pandodaily.com/2012/01/24/larry-page-to-googlers-if-you-dont-g...http://www.extremetech.com/computing/115425-google-is-fubar
tl;dr
> The mere suggestion that Google is now using Facebook as it's yardstick for success is extremely disturbing. The Facebook model is one that commoditizes clickstreams and data generated from consumers, selling it to the highest bidder; the right to privacy is considered as a hindrance to be worked around in any way possible in pursuit of higher corporate profits. Some background on this is available via RMS's links on this:http://stallman.org/facebook.html
definitively state the Google takes privacy super, super, super
seriously. It would be hard for me to explain just how seriously we
take privacy.
> If Google is indeed moving away from being a non-"evil",
> open source/freedom-friendly company to one that wants to compete with Facebook over who can commoditize their users better,
> that's not really the kind of place an OSS project should be. Users of SQLAlchemy should not have to sign onto a TOS that's designed to commoditize their data, doesn't adequately protect their privacy,
Our recent changes to the privacy policy were meant to make things
easier to understand and more transparent--not the other way around.
> and doesn't really care about the mission of an OSS project.
> Right now it seems like a good place to be might be Zed Shaw's Librelist:http://librelist.com/. Particularly, since it has no corporate agenda, you can actually get a tar.gz of all your messages.
Data liberation is also a big deal at Google. If there are cases
where you feel like you can't get your own data out, I can try to talk
to the appropriate PM. I mostly work on YouTube, and I know that it's
possible to get your videos, etc. out very easily.
> Imagine that, you can download your own data - craziness !
own data out of its systems is an unfortunate mischaracterization.
> The mission statement is exactly in line with what I'm concerned about: "It is a place for FOSS communities to discuss all the things they want without ads, censorship, signup requirements, bundled apps, or requirements that you use any particular email client or service."
Google Groups. You do have to have a Google account, but that seems
like a reasonable requirement to use a Google application.
> I'm concerned that a handful of links within messages point to google groups messages, which will be gone if I close down those lists. I'm also concerned about archive continuity. We do have an archive of everything athttp://www.mail-archive.com/sqlal...@googlegroups.com/, but it seems like it would be time consuming somehow get that archive and a new archive reading from Librelist to be joined into one. But I'm also sort of leaning towards not really caring - it all comes up under a Google search anyway (the irony).
> As far as sqlalchemy-devel, I'm also wondering if having a separate list is really worth it. I think the advantage here is that I get the attention of a bunch of you who I'd like to hear from, as opposed to on the main list where I usually don't - though perhaps you folks would respond to development-oriented subject lines on the main list ? This is another question I put out.
>
> As always, thoughts are appreciated !
Google" atitude to a "hey guys, we have a buddy on the inside who can
ask for certain features that we think are important" atitude. I know
that SQLAlchemy is a really important project. Google pays me money
to listen to developers in the outside world. You might think that
Google is an evil corporation that doesn't care about its users, but
it's actually quite the opposite.
For instance, if you look at our philosophy (http://www.google.com/
about/company/tenthings.html), it says "Focus on the user and all else
will follow." That's not just idle chatter. We're trained to apply
that in everything we do.
Thanks for the email, Mike. I'll probably see you next week at
PyCon :)
Best Regards,
-jj
Michael Bayer
All I'll say is, we'll see what Google starts to look like in the coming months. If open source developers start deciding they aren't comfortable with Google's TOS (also you should really read those tl; dr's and maybe read some other critiques, there's been plenty of late - I'm just going by what a lot what's being said outside of Google itself), then I have a duty to make sure my projects have a forum where developers are comfortable signing up and participating.
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