[arc-discuss] Re: OpenSolaris ARC community email changes (see PSARC 2006/569)

[John Plocher]

Alan Coopersmith wrote:
> So this is a way to force members to receive e-mail in a certain way?

I'm not sure what you are driving at here - AFAICT, there is no difference
in mail routing/handling between "all on one big alias" and "a set of 
smaller
aliases that are all referenced by an umbrella one"  Even the jive/forum 
interface
(as proposed, don't know yet if it is implementable on OS.O today) maintains
the similarity.

> Why does the mail system need to distinguish members vs. interns?   Why
The mail system doesn't, but something does, if only to keep us out of 
the trap
of manually maintaining out of date paper lists of people...  The mail 
system
has the benefit of having "list maintenance" tools as well as providing 
value
in exchange for keeping the lists up to date. 
> not just have everyone on the same list?   Or is the mail list on

There is a bit of "two birds with one stone" here - from a communication 
target,
members. interns and observers all get the same email stream.  
Segregating them
into roles lets us also manage voting, case assignments, meeting 
quorums, etc.
> opensolaris.org going to be the master list of who is in what class of
> membership?
>
The latter - I'm trying to come up with a system where you subscribe to the
mailing list that matches the role you are playing in the community.   
Or, better,
you indicate your role in the community (observer, member, core member...)
and the mailing lists are generated automatically from that data.  It 
isn't the mailing
list per-se that is interesting here, it is the ability to discern and 
enumerate people's
roles. 

While we *could* maintain such a list manually inside of Sun, it is not 
a good
long term mechanism.  It doesn't scale (someone would have to manually track
changes...), it isn't transparent (how does one find out who is on the 
ARC?),
and it gives the impression that the ARC is still a private Sun-Thing.

   -John