On Mon, 26 Apr 1999, Guido van Rossum wrote:
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.)
If one has a public archive with restricted membership, then one needs to have a process for people to petition membership, including policies on deciding admission (which could be as vague as "up to GvR's whim"). FWIW, the perl5-porters list is open but the perl6-porters list is closed. My suggestion is that we can start with an open policy on archives, and the lax posting policy for the multiple email address business (which should be incorporated in mailman++ =), with the explicitely stated caveat that if it turns out that that policy doesn't work, we reserve the right to tighten things up. I also suggest that we don't advertise the fact that anyone can post. [Except of course that we've just mentioned this in archives which I'm arguing should be public =)] --david