EMWD/Affinity/Empathy in 2023
Hi all,
We're exploring Mailman 3 and the custom interfaces provided by EMWD's Affinity and Empathy look very interesting: https://www.mailmanhost.com/affinity-mailman/
However, I saw reports of EMWD being a one-man show and the owner sadly passing away in 2021; but I've also seen threads here referring to the Affinity and Empathy projects in 2022. It wasn't clear to me if EMWD is still an active business and Affinity and Empathy are still active offerings. Does anyone here have any direct contact/relationship/experience with EMWD/Affinity/Empathy following the owner's passing? Or knowledge of any other offerings publicly available today that are similar to Affinity/Empathy?
Thanks!
On 1/16/23 07:58, jaboyib556--- via Mailman-users wrote:
However, I saw reports of EMWD being a one-man show and the owner sadly passing away in 2021; but I've also seen threads here referring to the Affinity and Empathy projects in 2022. It wasn't clear to me if EMWD is still an active business and Affinity and Empathy are still active offerings. Does anyone here have any direct contact/relationship/experience with EMWD/Affinity/Empathy following the owner's passing? Or knowledge of any other offerings publicly available today that are similar to Affinity/Empathy?
I have had some contact, but not much. As far as I know, they are still in business and offering list hosting including Mailman 3 lists with Affinity and Empathy. They no longer offer support for installation and maintenance of Mailman on other people's servers.
When we first were developing Mailman 3, we designed it in a modular fashion with a REST API for the core engine so that users who were so inclined could develop their own web UIs for archiving and list management. We also recognized that we needed to develop our own to make a complete package. Thus, we developed HyperKitty and Postorius for that, but we have always hoped that the community would develop others (hopefully open source and Python based). As far as I know, it was only EMWD that did this and for business reasons, kept it proprietary.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
Mark Sapiro writes:
I have had some contact [with EMWD], but not much. As far as I know, they are still in business and offering list hosting including Mailman 3 lists with Affinity and Empathy. They no longer offer support for installation and maintenance of Mailman on other people's servers.
That exactly describes my experience. To jaboyib556, I recommend you contact them directly and make your own judgment. I do not know the current operators of EMWD, but I do know that the Carpenter family carefully vetted several bids. And their concentration on servers they run suggests they know what they're good at and have focus. I think they're a good bet, but only you can judge.
As far as I know, it was only EMWD that did this and for business reasons, kept it proprietary.
I corresponded with Brian about this.[1] He said that a third-party consultant (not sure if they're related to the current operators) built the Affinity and Empathy applications in PHP on a limited budget, and he felt that he needed to keep them proprietary as a temporary "no competition" measure until they could build up a nest egg to support on-going development. He said, and I have no reason to disbelieve him, that he thought it would take a year to build the reputation, another year to recoup the investment, and within that time frame he planned an open source release. I suspect he planned a Aladdin Ghostscript-like strategy: with the publication of release N, he would release N-1 as open source.
He made no commitments, but I believe that was his aspiration. He was always a great supporter of Mailman, giving generously of his time and expertise to people on our lists including those hosting with other businesses.
We miss him a lot.
Footnotes: [1] On friendly terms: "hope for an open-source release" is not a matter of moral imperative with me, and I believe I speak for all Mailman developers on that.
participants (3)
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jaboyib556＠v3dev.com -
Mark Sapiro -
Stephen J. Turnbull