Sunsetting mailing lists - Proposal

Mailing lists have been a vital component of the Blender development ecosystem. It all started with bf-committers, and grew up to 70 lists over the years. With the introduction of more advanced discussion platforms such as devtalk.blender.org, code.blender.org and the rise of social media, communication around Blender development has evolved.

The use of lists.blender.org has been in decline for a few years now, with most content being simply reposted from other channels.

For this reason I suggest to retire mailing lists in the near future (a few weeks), and fully move their function to devtalk.blender.org. The concept of “mailing list” will change. Contributors are invited to participate in discussions or start a new topic by choosing a category (technical feedback, meeting report, etc) and then tag it with an “area of interest” or “module”.

It is possible to set up email notifications for categories, so the original "mailing list” experience can be somewhat re-created. If you are subscribed to bf-committers, you can instead watch the announcements category to get all important announcements.

The existing mailing list will become read-only, and will be available at archive.blender.org.

The admin team is aligned on this topic, feedback from everyone on this proposal is welcome.

24 Likes

oh mailman (The software that actually runs our mailing list), you served us well, you kept us together and did a wonderful job at that, but you’re old now, email isn’t as popular as it used to be, security is much harder than it used to be, emailing people their password just in case they forgot is just isn’t OK any more…

go rest mailman, you deserved it.

7 Likes

Mailing lists have a “slow charm” that’s probably gone for good. I stalk development on gitea anyway now… so long

1 Like

So long, and thanks for all the phish.

3 Likes

Will there be a category in devtalk for important announcements that would traditionally have gone to bf-committers? I’m not talking about the weekly dev updates, but more about posts like [Bf-committers] CMake cleanup.

Personally I’d want to keep up to date, and if possible configure notifications for such messages, without getting notified of everything that happens on devtalk.

As far as I know, the idea is to use the announcement category for this. That’s also what Francesco wrote:

If you are subscribed to bf-committers, you can instead watch the announcements category to get all important announcements.