Hm, I searched Google's comp.lang.python archives for mentions of python-dev before 1999, and found this: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.lang.python/-HjN6YjOZJg/wJGxiOlpt1MJ (posted 6/22/98 by Marc-André Lemburg): "What would you think of a python-dev list that takes at least some of burdens of intergrating patches, testing, etc. off of your back ? Then you'd have more time for design, etc." (There's also a reply from me where I question whether it will save me any time.) From this I understand that at that point, python-dev wasn't formed yet. Sadly it does appear as if the archives of Python lists before February have mostly disappeared -- e.g. Activestate has the same first messages as you quoted. On Mon, Jan 6, 2020 at 6:56 AM Skip Montanaro <skip.montanaro@gmail.com> wrote:
On Wed, Jan 1, 2020 at 7:25 PM Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> wrote:
On 1/1/20 11:22 AM, Barry Warsaw wrote:
I am looking at the MM2 mailing list creation confirmation messages in my personal archives. Both dev@python.org (at 09:49 server local time?) and python-dev@python.org (at 14:17) were created on April 19, 1999. I don’t remember what happened to dev@ but based on the timeline, I’m retroguessing that we created dev@ first, then quickly rethought the name, created python-dev@ and retired dev@.
Just to provide some closure here, the pipermail archive for python-dev goes back to April 21, 1999. There is one, possibly spurious message from some other list dated March 16, 1995 from Linus Torvalds.
Aside from this one message and as far as I can tell, all the other messages from April 21 forward are in the current Hyperkitty archive.
(Apologies for letting this drop for a couple days.)
I'm still befuddled. When I look at the MM2 archive for python-list, it also only goes back to Feb 1999. Surely I'm missing something. Maybe GNU Mailman itself isn't much older than 1999 <https://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-announce/1999-July/000004.html>. Perhaps python-dev content was embedded in python-list/comp.lang.python before Apr 1999, but we were certainly discussing development of and in Python well before 1999. Where did all the archives go? Maybe it's just my failing memory. I can accept that. If you look at the filenames of the earliest python-list and python-dev messages in the archives:
- New (?) suggestion to solve "assignment-in-while" desire <https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/1999-February/005101.html> (python-list - Feb 1999 - 005101.html) - ZServer 1.0b1: spurious colon in HTTP response line <https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/1999-April/095103.html> (python-dev - Apr 1999 - 095103.html)
you get the impression that there must have been earlier messages. Wouldn't new lists simply start with message 000000.html by default? The first message in the csv mailing list is https://mail.python.org/pipermail/csv/2003-January/000000.html.
Perhaps what I really pine for are comp.lang.python archives? GMane is gone. Google Groups seems to have nothing. They must be someplace. I've heard the Internet never forgets. Even if my personal quest (old messages about Rattlesnake and other alternative virtual machine projects) fails to bear fruit, I suspect there is value in maintaining the history of the Python language.
Thx again...
Skip
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