Re: [open-cobol-list] Forum and Subscriptions, and the future.

[Brian Tiffin]

On Thu, 20 Sep 2012 13:05:20 -0400, vince <address@hidden> wrote:

> On Thursday 20 Sep 2012 08:55:42 Michael Anderson wrote:
> > Hi all!
> >
> > For a while now, outside, on other listservs, I've been hearing that
> > OpenCOBOL is not accepting new members.
>
> The opencobol site has had a few problems one of them is allowing new  
> users to
> join. There are two other sites/forums created to get around this and
> hopefully Biffin will reply regarding.

There is a forum at http://forum.peoplecards.ca/ but I'm in the process of  
removing it.  phpBB is a spam trap, and cleaning out robots could be a 4  
hour job everyday.  Abandoned.  5600 registrations to screen, 12000  
messages.  Not going to happen.

There was an archived TikiWiki 2.2 site at oldsite.add1tocobol.com which  
is also now a spam trap.  Hundreds of robots have glommed on to it.

Robot fighting is a full time job, so a hosted solution is one of the few  
viable alternatives for public forums now.
SourceForge is the place to be.  It's been hosting this mailing list since  
the beginning, and now we are trying to convince people to use the  
Discussion forums there as well.  And, of course, SourceForge is in the  
middle of an upgrade pass, so things there actually seem a little flaky,  
but that should improve over the next few days/weeks.

One alternative may be to not allow open registrations to the forum, but  
to use a 'by invitation' system.  In that you'd need to know someone to  
put in an account request on your behalf, building up a ring of 'actually  
a human' trust.  Looking into how that may work.

For now, http://sourceforge.net/p/open-cobol/discussion/  and the ads are  
muchly decreased once logged in.

> > Some even say that OC is an inactive project, not having a new update
> > since 2009.
>
> There has been development occurring on v2.0 but it has been on  
> restricted
> circulation owing to the licensing issues which I hope will be resolved  
> soon /
> before end of year!!
>
> How ever, v2.0 is still in a cross between Alpha and a Beta release state
> although that said it works for my ACAS accounting system when I last  
> tested
> it some six months ago. [I have not done much, as I have eye issues
> restricting programming except when my eyes are have clear days which is  
> not
> as often as I would like].
>
> > So, what is the OFFICIAL view on the following, the more detail, the  
> > better.
> >
> > Is the opencobol.org forum closed for new accounts?
>
> See above.
>
> > can anyone subscribe to the OpenCOBOL listserv at sourceforge.
> Brian?

Yes.  Subscriptions to the mailing list are managed by the forge, so yep.

> > Add1toCobol, available for new accounts? Looks like the most recent post
> > here is Nov 2010?

See above.  I was going to turn up the archived TikiWiki but it's under  
attack at the moment.

Recommendation is to head to SourceForge, join up at  
https://sourceforge.net/user/registration and play away.  It's a fairly  
feature rich system.  (Note the https, secure account creation - which is  
a good thing).

> Just not really used for forums but opencobol forum which you can get to  
> from
> there is still active just not for new registration (lots of spam).
>
> Vince

Cheers,
Brian