Migrating this list to a different platform (take 2)

Migrating this list to a different platform (take 2)

[Konstantin Ryabitsev]

Hello, all:

I'm told that a while back there were some discussions to migrate this list to
vger, but the process never really got finalized.

I would like to restart this discussion again, because I am in the middle of
vger list migrations and it seems like an opportune moment to bring this up.

There are the following benefits to gain after migration:

- it becomes an open list that doesn't require much moderator involvement
- the messages are DMARC-compliant when received by subscribers
- the infrastructure is supported and monitored by LF IT 24/7

However, there will be the following impacts:

- we can try to set up a forward from the old address, but previous attempts
  to do so with mailman had mixed results
- if the old address is set up to forward mail to the new address, then anyone
  sending to both addresses will get doubles of everything, which can be
  annoying
- setting up a hard bounce at the old address would probably be preferable,
  but it's a "ripping off the bandaid" kind of approach

If you are interested in migrating the list, I suggest we move it to
alsa-devel@lists.linux.dev and not vger, solely because vger is in the process
of migration itself and it would be easier to use the lists.linux.dev domain
at this stage than to go with vger.kernel.org.

I am happy to provide any more info if you have any questions.

-K

Re: Migrating this list to a different platform (take 2)

[Takashi Iwai]

On Tue, 17 Oct 2023 22:25:27 +0200,
Konstantin Ryabitsev wrote:
> 
> Hello, all:
> 
> I'm told that a while back there were some discussions to migrate this list to
> vger, but the process never really got finalized.
> 
> I would like to restart this discussion again, because I am in the middle of
> vger list migrations and it seems like an opportune moment to bring this up.
> 
> There are the following benefits to gain after migration:
> 
> - it becomes an open list that doesn't require much moderator involvement
> - the messages are DMARC-compliant when received by subscribers
> - the infrastructure is supported and monitored by LF IT 24/7
> 
> However, there will be the following impacts:
> 
> - we can try to set up a forward from the old address, but previous attempts
>   to do so with mailman had mixed results
> - if the old address is set up to forward mail to the new address, then anyone
>   sending to both addresses will get doubles of everything, which can be
>   annoying
> - setting up a hard bounce at the old address would probably be preferable,
>   but it's a "ripping off the bandaid" kind of approach
> 
> If you are interested in migrating the list, I suggest we move it to
> alsa-devel@lists.linux.dev and not vger, solely because vger is in the process
> of migration itself and it would be easier to use the lists.linux.dev domain
> at this stage than to go with vger.kernel.org.
> 
> I am happy to provide any more info if you have any questions.
> 
> -K

Thanks Konstantin!

I personally find that it'd be a significant improvement to be an open
list; it was often problems that manual approvals took long when
admins are off due to vacation or sickness.

But the whole decision depends on Jaroslav, after all, who has been
administrating the list since the beginning.


Takashi

Re: Migrating this list to a different platform (take 2)

[Jaroslav Kysela]

Hello Konstantin,

On 17. 10. 23 22:25, Konstantin Ryabitsev wrote:
> Hello, all:
> 
> I'm told that a while back there were some discussions to migrate this list to
> vger, but the process never really got finalized.
> 
> I would like to restart this discussion again, because I am in the middle of
> vger list migrations and it seems like an opportune moment to bring this up.
> 
> There are the following benefits to gain after migration:
> 
> - it becomes an open list that doesn't require much moderator involvement

I think that it may be the main reason to migrate it. How do you handle the 
inbound spam? It's the only reason, why our mailing list is moderated.

> - the messages are DMARC-compliant when received by subscribers

It seems that the mailman3 operates correctly with a simple fix.

> - the infrastructure is supported and monitored by LF IT 24/7

We have no big outages for our mail list right now. The server is monitored in 
a hosting center, too.

> However, there will be the following impacts:
> 
> - we can try to set up a forward from the old address, but previous attempts
>    to do so with mailman had mixed results
> - if the old address is set up to forward mail to the new address, then anyone
>    sending to both addresses will get doubles of everything, which can be
>    annoying
> - setting up a hard bounce at the old address would probably be preferable,
>    but it's a "ripping off the bandaid" kind of approach

Ideally, the e-mail address of the list should be preserved, but I guess that 
an option to redirect DNS MX records to LF servers is not possible, right?

> If you are interested in migrating the list, I suggest we move it to
> alsa-devel@lists.linux.dev and not vger, solely because vger is in the process
> of migration itself and it would be easier to use the lists.linux.dev domain
> at this stage than to go with vger.kernel.org.
> 
> I am happy to provide any more info if you have any questions.

Thank you,
	Jaroslav

-- 
Jaroslav Kysela <perex@perex.cz>
Linux Sound Maintainer; ALSA Project; Red Hat, Inc.

Re: Migrating this list to a different platform (take 2)

[Mark Brown]

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On Thu, Oct 19, 2023 at 03:14:39PM +0200, Takashi Iwai wrote:

> I personally find that it'd be a significant improvement to be an open
> list; it was often problems that manual approvals took long when
> admins are off due to vacation or sickness.

> But the whole decision depends on Jaroslav, after all, who has been
> administrating the list since the beginning.

This is broadly my opinion also, especially with using b4 the moderation
delays are noticable for me.

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Re: Migrating this list to a different platform (take 2)

[Konstantin Ryabitsev]

On Thu, Oct 19, 2023 at 03:57:35PM +0200, Jaroslav Kysela wrote:
> > I'm told that a while back there were some discussions to migrate this list to
> > vger, but the process never really got finalized.
> > 
> > I would like to restart this discussion again, because I am in the middle of
> > vger list migrations and it seems like an opportune moment to bring this up.
> > 
> > There are the following benefits to gain after migration:
> > 
> > - it becomes an open list that doesn't require much moderator involvement
> 
> I think that it may be the main reason to migrate it. How do you handle the
> inbound spam? It's the only reason, why our mailing list is moderated.

We do allow a small amount of spam through, unfortunately, but the combination
of aggressive blocklist checking, spam filtering, and strict content policies
allow us to keep that volume pretty low (1-2 messages a week for most lists).

> > - we can try to set up a forward from the old address, but previous attempts
> >    to do so with mailman had mixed results
> > - if the old address is set up to forward mail to the new address, then anyone
> >    sending to both addresses will get doubles of everything, which can be
> >    annoying
> > - setting up a hard bounce at the old address would probably be preferable,
> >    but it's a "ripping off the bandaid" kind of approach
> 
> Ideally, the e-mail address of the list should be preserved, but I guess
> that an option to redirect DNS MX records to LF servers is not possible,
> right?

Well, it's possible, but that would require us handling all of
alsa-project.org mail, and it's probably not what you want. We *can* set
things up so we treat alsa-project.org as an internal relay, and then you just
pass alsa-devel@alsa-project.org to our lists server, but this is somewhat
fragile as well.

There's a third option -- instead of migrating the alsa-devel list, we can
migrate all activity to linux-sound@vger.kernel.org. It's an existing list
that currently sees about 5 messages a year (and most of them are cc'd to
alsa-devel anyway).

The process would be:

1. Set up https://patchwork.kernel.org/project/alsa-devel/ to source from two
   lists instead of just alsa-devel (we do this already for netdev, which
   sources from both netdev and bpf lists)
2. Change all MAINTAINERS entries from alsa-devel to linux-sound
3. Eventually, this will result in almost no patches being sent to alsa-devel,
   at which point we can evaluate if the alsa-devel list sees little enough
   traffic that it can just be closed or redirected

I think this option is worth considering because it will achieve the desired
effect of removing moderation on submitted patches, keep existing maintainer
workflows, and not require actually migrating the alsa-devel list.

Thoughts?

-K

Re: Migrating this list to a different platform (take 2)

[Mark Brown]

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On Thu, Oct 19, 2023 at 10:32:11AM -0400, Konstantin Ryabitsev wrote:

> There's a third option -- instead of migrating the alsa-devel list, we can
> migrate all activity to linux-sound@vger.kernel.org. It's an existing list
> that currently sees about 5 messages a year (and most of them are cc'd to
> alsa-devel anyway).

That would definitely work well from my point of view.

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Re: Migrating this list to a different platform (take 2)

[Konstantin Ryabitsev]

On Thu, Oct 19, 2023 at 03:34:18PM +0100, Mark Brown wrote:
> > There's a third option -- instead of migrating the alsa-devel list, we can
> > migrate all activity to linux-sound@vger.kernel.org. It's an existing list
> > that currently sees about 5 messages a year (and most of them are cc'd to
> > alsa-devel anyway).
> 
> That would definitely work well from my point of view.

Okay, since it doesn't really affect anything, I've reconfigured the patchwork
side of things to accept patches sent both to alsa-devel and linux-sound. If
you do want to go down the route of shifting everything towards linux-sound,
the next step (once everyone is in agreement), is to make the changes to
MAINTAINERS. You don't have to do all subsystems at once, you can start with
the SOUND subsystem to trial things out and then shift others if everything is
working correctly.

-K

Re: Migrating this list to a different platform (take 2)

[Jaroslav Kysela]

On 19. 10. 23 18:25, Konstantin Ryabitsev wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 19, 2023 at 03:34:18PM +0100, Mark Brown wrote:
>>> There's a third option -- instead of migrating the alsa-devel list, we can
>>> migrate all activity to linux-sound@vger.kernel.org. It's an existing list
>>> that currently sees about 5 messages a year (and most of them are cc'd to
>>> alsa-devel anyway).
>>
>> That would definitely work well from my point of view.
> 
> Okay, since it doesn't really affect anything, I've reconfigured the patchwork
> side of things to accept patches sent both to alsa-devel and linux-sound. If
> you do want to go down the route of shifting everything towards linux-sound,
> the next step (once everyone is in agreement), is to make the changes to
> MAINTAINERS. You don't have to do all subsystems at once, you can start with
> the SOUND subsystem to trial things out and then shift others if everything is
> working correctly.

If it's an overall agreement, we can move the driver related threads and the 
patch handling to linux-sound mailing list and keep alsa-devel list for the 
user space packages and the project related discussions. I'll send an initial 
patch for MAINTAINERS ASAP.

						Jaroslav

-- 
Jaroslav Kysela <perex@perex.cz>
Linux Sound Maintainer; ALSA Project; Red Hat, Inc.

Re: Migrating this list to a different platform (take 2)

[Takashi Iwai]

On Fri, 20 Oct 2023 09:00:24 +0200,
Jaroslav Kysela wrote:
> 
> On 19. 10. 23 18:25, Konstantin Ryabitsev wrote:
> > On Thu, Oct 19, 2023 at 03:34:18PM +0100, Mark Brown wrote:
> >>> There's a third option -- instead of migrating the alsa-devel list, we can
> >>> migrate all activity to linux-sound@vger.kernel.org. It's an existing list
> >>> that currently sees about 5 messages a year (and most of them are cc'd to
> >>> alsa-devel anyway).
> >> 
> >> That would definitely work well from my point of view.
> > 
> > Okay, since it doesn't really affect anything, I've reconfigured the patchwork
> > side of things to accept patches sent both to alsa-devel and linux-sound. If
> > you do want to go down the route of shifting everything towards linux-sound,
> > the next step (once everyone is in agreement), is to make the changes to
> > MAINTAINERS. You don't have to do all subsystems at once, you can start with
> > the SOUND subsystem to trial things out and then shift others if everything is
> > working correctly.
> 
> If it's an overall agreement, we can move the driver related threads
> and the patch handling to linux-sound mailing list and keep alsa-devel
> list for the user space packages and the project related
> discussions. I'll send an initial patch for MAINTAINERS ASAP.

Sounds reasonable.

I'll merge your patch once after getting ACKs, but I suppose it's no
urgent change and OK for 6.7 merge window?


thanks,

Takashi