email: lists.ocaml.org and inbox.ocaml.org

[avsm]

See https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml.org/issues/1169 for the overall tracking issue.

lists.ocaml.org

status: sustain -> deprecate

We've had email lists hosted at lists.ocaml.org since around 2013, based on an Exim and Mailman setup. In the past few years, the usage of the mailing lists has dropped off sharply in favour of other collaboration tools (most notably, our own https://discuss.ocaml.org). More worryingly, the amount of spam I've had to deal with has sharply shot up, with several instances of "spam bombing" putting the infrastructure under very heavy load.

I believe that it is very important to maintain a viable email infrastructure for the OCaml community, but the current method isn't sustainable. Therefore, I propose:

• switching the current lists.ocaml.org archive into read-only mode, with the existing email lists archives available indefinitely for perusal.
• beginning an effort to replace the exim/mailman stack with one that is more maintainable. Specifically, the MirageOS community (lead by @dinosaure) has been working on clean-slate email replacement infrastructure written in pure OCaml for several years now (2016 talk, 2019 blog). By temporarily switching the current infrastructure to read-only mode, this will give us the breathing room to develop and deploy a modern mailing list infrastructure that can be extended and maintained into the coming decades much more easily.

inbox.ocaml.org

status: active

This is an archive of the caml-list published online, originally deployed by @nojb. It uses a separate infrastructure from the lists.ocaml.org site as it only handles a single mailing list. The main activity that needs to happen is:

• migrate the underlying machine from Rackspace to new hosting provider. This should be straightforward given that there is a Dockerfile for the service.
• integrate the look and feel with ocaml.org. We may be able to deprecate the use of a separate domain for this and place it directly within ocaml.org. The existing service can run for a few years with permanent redirects.

[avsm]

Digging through my email, the inbox.ocaml.org scripts by @nojb are at https://github.com/nojb/caml-list-mirror