My name's been tossed around a lot lately, so I want to state my position once and for all so everyone gets the same message at the same time.
First, I'm sure Craig would love nothing more than to be blessed (and paid) by Sun to continue the cobalt-* lists as they stand today. Comments to the contrary of his stated intention to shut down list.cobalt.com and wash his hands of the hassle should be directed at someone above him (I don't know who though). Honestly, he's got no say in the matter. He could have just chosen to ignore the server, and in 3 days when it dies again, we'll be in the dark. At least this way we know what's coming and when, and we can take some proactive action. Frankly, I think it's good that action is finally being "forced"... yes, I'd love it if Sun woke up, realized what an awesome thing they had at one time for their $2 billion, and cranked up the Cobalt machine again. But it just ain't gonna happen, so we need to move on. Due to the 'warring' factions on the various lists, I have been approached by several individuals who would like the follow-on list(s) to cobalt-* remain "independent", and I've been selected by most as the lucky unbiased all-knowing former cobalt-* list owner that most would like to have "in charge" of whatever format the cobalt-* follow-on list(s) take... :) There seems to be two separate discussions happening - how to preserve the content of the cobalt-* lists, and where people should post/join to have a similar forum after May 14th. I think today a bunch of people have pounded list.cobalt.com into submission by grabbing the archive mbox files for the cobalt-* lists, with the intent of posting the content online. I think this is great, and the more people that want to mirror the content online somehow, fine. I am happy to be the "figurehead" of whatever follow-on list(s) get built by whomever, if that's what [any|every]one wants. There's been so much angst brewing among many list members over who/what is advertising too much, who is a spammer, who doesn't like another person, etc. Frankly I couldn't care less about all that. People are going to have disagreements no matter what anyone says or does. As long as the content stays mostly meaningful I'm happy... KMail makes it so easy to filter out flame threads I have no interest in! :) FWIW, I personally plan to continue monitoring/posting to the cobaltfacts list for now. It's been "up" the longest of all the 'parallel' lists, and most of the cobalt-* regulars are, and have been, posting on cobaltfacts for quite some time. I think that, at least for the immediate future, cobaltfacts is where everyone should sign on for their Cobalt email list fix. I will gladly contribute time/effort/whatever to munging the cobalt-* archives to become a seamless part of the cobaltfacts/qbalt/fubar-whatever lists, if anyone wants to tackle that. What I'd really love to see is a compilation of content from the cobalt-* lists into more HOWTOs and knowledgebase-type formats... Searching a mailing list can be useful if someone actually got the solution to the problem down in one email. But following a thread can be painful... There's enough knowledge on here that if everyone picked out 3 or 4 of their pet peeves/things they figured out that nobody else did/etc, we could have an amazing CBK (common body of knowledge) to build from. I'm thinking of setting up a wiki page over at www.cobaltfaqs.com that anyone can add their requests to for HOWTOs. Then interested folks can troll the lists, compile a HOWTO for each request, and post it online someplace... (where/how/who double-checks/etc is obviously TBD). What would be nice/helpful is if we can all agree on at least the stop-gap measure of using cobaltfacts. Then we could nicely ask Craig to do a one-time direct email to all cobalt-* members about the impending shutdown of cobalt-* and include a link to cobaltfacts. Even nicer would be to get every cobalt-* subscriber email address and I would send them an email directly with the cobaltfacts sign-up link and/or just auto sign them up for cobaltfacts... I'm not sure how that last option would be looked on by the anti-spam community; it definitely reeks of no-opting-in... So, to sum it up, I am "on" the cobaltfacts list now, and will continue to do so after May 14. If you are mirroring the cobalt-* lists content, add your website to the CobaltFacts webring so others know where to look. -- Bruce _______________________________________________ cobalt-security mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://list.cobalt.com/mailman/listinfo/cobalt-security
