From: Crispen, Bob (Robert.Crispen@HSV.Boeing.com)
Date: Thu Jan 11 2001 - 08:29:29 CST
Nicolas Noble[SMTP:Pixel@the-babel-tower.nobis.phear.org] sez:
> Suggestion 1&2 bis: moving the hypermail.org website into a sourceforge
> project since they already got such mecanisms.
>
I agree. Putting hypermail on sourceforge will announce
to the world that hypermail is in business. While there are
people who'll automatically type in www.gzip.org or
www.hypermail.org (etc.) when they want to find out about
an open source program, many people won't. And many
old timers like me may still have the old, dead EIT URL for
hypermail.
And too, we might attract some coders on sourceforge.
Stranger things have happened. I know that libvrml97 took
some significant steps forward when it went to sourceforge.
> > If we don't act, hypermail will continue its decay and it will
> eventually
> > just end up on that huge pile of dead software projects. I'll certainly
> > abandon the ship before that happens. I just think it would be a shame
> to see
> > that happen when there's potential in the project.
>
> I agree. Hypermail is a great piece of software but we should be able to
> get a little more from it. However, we should get people moving up and
> ready to code for it or, as you said, nobody will continue it.
>
I disagree that it's in decay, since (a) hypermail patently works,
(b) new features have been added that represent significant
user requirements, and (c) it's in such wide use.
As to the last, I suspect there are people out there who
are still using Kevin Hughes' original version. We need to
get the word out. If you don't mind, I'll see if I can write up
something we could feed to Jesse Berst etc. I think we'd
find some interest in the trade press, especially if we
avoid the dates when quarterly earnings are announced --
which the trade press too often believe is technical news.
Maybe the folks on this list might want to take a look at the
competitors to hypermail. That might focus us on features
that other developers and development teams have found
that meet their users' requirements.
It's a pity that egroups developed their own (and it may be
that hypermail wasn't suitable, since they may use a
database). Doubly so, since I find their way of listing
articles much harder to get around in than hypermail's.
But maybe we can look toward getting some high profile
placements of hypermail on similar sites. We might even
achieve that by sending email to these sites saying
something like, "Your mail archives are really hard to
get around in. I sure wish you used something like
hypermail instead of whatever you're using now."
Just because hypermail is open source doesn't mean it
isn't a product and isn't succeptible to traditional marketing
techniques.
Bob Crispen
bob.crispen@boeing.com