[ODE] Forum debate

[james at 6msoft.com]

It seems like a lot of people prefer to not leave the mailing list simply
because they are used to it (same people that use .plan files instead of
blogs still?).

Anyways, sure you can search the mailing list using google's "site:"
command, but how long does it take the Google spider to hit new topics?
And being dependent on a 3rd party search engine seems really lame to me
and if you really like Google, it can be used in the same fashion to
search a forum. You can also search your personal mail box, but what if
you are new to the list, you don't have old threads, so you end up with a
lot of re-posted questions.

With that said, there are email clients and services that can sort email
and present it very similar to a forum (gmail is great for mailing
lists...if you are invited). But as mentioned before, I have never seen an
email client that can present code snips as good as forum software can
(there are forums that will even color code!), and for a development
community, that is kind of important.

Anyways, most forum packages let people subscribe so it can act just like
a mailing list for those that hate their web browsers. Either way, I do
think the mailing list should at least split into ODE-Devel and ODE-Users
or something.

-James