Re: <nettime> nettime caring

[Rich Kulawiec via Nettime-tmp <nettime-tmp@mail.ljudmila.org>]

On Mon, Jun 12, 2023 at 10:18:39AM +0200, Felix Stalder via Nettime-tmp wrote:
> If you cannot make it tomorrow, please write ideas, suggestions, comments to
> the list, so they can be taken into consideration tomorrow.

I can't make the meeting, so I'll reiterate/clarify the proposal I made
earlier:

	- Pick a domain name (in a real TLD like .org) and register it
		at Nearly Free Speech (NFS).  Split the registration
		contacts across multiple people to defend from
		a single point-of-failure.

	- Set up a virtual host at Panix - split those contacts as well
		to defend from a single point-of-failure.

	- Install a hardened OS (e.g. OpenBSD) with a decent MTA (e.g.
		sendmail) and MLM (e.g. Mailman).  Incidentally, this
		is the stack I've been using for years to run a few
		dozen mailing lists with lots of users: it works.
		Configure appropriately to comply with the relevant
		RFCs and best practices.

	- Designate a set of people as list contacts/moderators. This
		does NOT necessarily mean that the list will be moderated,
		but someone has to deal with things Mailman can't do
		automatically and someone has to deal with traffic
		sent to the -owner address.  This set of people needs
		to include whoever is running the host and they'll
		either need to know or learn how to do some basic
		tasks with Mailman.

	- If there needs to be a debate over the list description,
		have that debate.  Same for any other issues: get those
		settled and in place on the list's "about" page.

	- Import the current archives, invite all current subscribers
		to sign up.  (Do NOT just bulk-subscribe them, that's
		a big mistake.)  It might take a round or two of invites
		to pick up everynone.
	
	- Figure out how to pay for this.  Domain registration plus
		hosting will be less  than US $200/year, but someone
		or a group of someone will need to pay for it.


This gets nettime its own home with enough redundancy among people
that the loss of any one person should be survivable.  It puts it
on a reasonable technical footing and leaves the door open to future
upgrades.  It avoids the morass of problems incurred by going too
cheap or registering/hosting with bad actors.  It will, though, require
a core of people who can/will learn how to run it -- which means
they'll need to know some things about sysadmin, DNS, SMTP, HTTP,
security, abuse control, etc. or they'll need to learn.

---rsk
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