Determined to make good on my desire to foster a sense of community for Plerd beyond its naked GitHub page, I created a simple homepage for the open-source software that powers this blog. Includes a boastful (but entirely true!) bullet-list of features, and link to a couple of mailing lists I’ve just launched. I encourage readers interested in using Plerd to check it out.

I must admit by non-thrillment about using Google Groups to host the mailing lists. However, I know from mailing-list research I performed for another project a few months ago that, unless I wished to subscribe to a commercial hosting service just for the lists, my choices came down to either Google Groups or Mailman. And I know that if I had to use Mailman, I’d never get this done.

The other project belongs to an organization larger than just me, with plenty of reasons to avoid long-term tech dependencies. It also had and a brand-new server I could mess around with safely, and so in its case I set up Mailman. I had a terrible time. The task took up much of a weekend. I’m sure I could get better with practice, but in the interest of making something happen for Plerd’s sake, it seemed wiser to hold my head high and submit to the Big G.

None of this is a dig on Mailman — I’m happy that the world has at least one ubiquitous free and open-source mailing list solution. And it works! I suppose I’m just bemused that there exists exactly one feasible solution, given the great utility and popularity of mailing lists as a concept. But, that’s how it seems to be anyway.