In a private mail, Greg Stein suggested that the python-dev archives should be restricted to the members of the list. I prefer to make them public, but I won't want to impose this on others without discussion. So I've made the archives private for the time being while we discuss this meta-issue. (Also, the existence of the list isn't announced by mailman on its listinfo page.) Here's my argument for open archives. I don't think that we have anything to hide from the public -- I think of us as a technical forum whose discussions may affect others (e.g. Python users) and I think it's often useful for those others to be able to see what we've said. I want to keep membership of the list closed as a gentle way to enforce focus and quality of discussion. Jeremy pointed out that there's no restiction on posting, and mentioned that together with open archives this makes the list just as open as an open-subscription list. I don't see this equivalence -- certainly it makes a difference in practice, and the open posting is simply a mechanism to allow members with multiple email addresses to post from whereever they are. If we regularly get spammed or find the list is targeted by angry Python users we might have to restrict posting to members (and deal with the multiple address problem). I hope the discussion about this issue will be short (otherwise it would detract from the real goal of this list). I'll follow the desire of the majority of current members; once we have a decision I propose to stick with it and simply present new members with the facts. --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)