Choose mailing list system for package-url - esp. purl-spec

[mjherzog]

We need a mailing list for package-url in general and specific mailing lists for purl-spec and vers-spec. The purposes for the mailing list(s) are to provide:

• Periodic outbound updates to people who are interested but not directly engaged in our projects
• Notification/reminder of meetings and other events
• Notification of schedules for approval of standard or specification changes (purl-spec, vers-spec)
• Discussion forum for people who do not want to use Slack or GitHub (for whatever reason)

Groups.io is a popular service for mailing lists. It is free for one mailing list up to 100 members. The paid plans offer more features. Groups.io is used by Linux Foundation and CycloneDX.
Another popular service is GoogleGroups. It is used by OpenForum Europe, ClearlyDefined and Google Summer of Code. GoogleGroups is usually bundled with other Google Workspace applications.

Some key questions are:

• How do we want to use mailing lists to extend outreach, but also avoid duplication and competition with encouraging people to engage in the GitHub context?
• What mailing lists do we want for package-url in general and for purl-spec or vers-spec in particular?
• What is the best mailing list platform balancing features and costs?

We need to make a decision in June so that we have a mailing list service in place for the PURL 1.0 Standard/Specification cycle.

[darakian]

Love the idea of a mailing list. No preference on platform from me, but on

How do we want to use mailing lists to extend outreach, but also avoid duplication and competition with encouraging people to engage in the GitHub context?

I think this can be addressed by maintaining a bias against long form conversation in email. eg. reference issues/discussions/PRs in emails and suggest that people go to the repo if they start conversing in email. This goes counter to the idea of email being another discussion medium, but that's my $0.02.

[mjherzog]

Another candidate is mailman3 which is fully open source in self-hosted mode.

Since we do not have resources to self-host we would need to use some SaaS-mode such as https://mailman3.com/. The website has the disclaimer: "Mailman3.com (this site) is unaffiliated with Mailman3.org, the domain used to coordinate development of the Mailman 3 free software suite. The Mailman 3 core developers are not involved with Mailman3.com, and cannot answer any questions or provide any support related to its operations."

The website also says: "We love open-source software and provide free hosting for OSS mailing lists.
To apply, send a project URL and approximate monthly volume to our email."
The company behind mailman3.com is https://thenewit.eu/ based in Estonia. There is little public information about this company, but their primary business seems to be Mailman3 SaaS with an AWS option.