[snip]

> After going through the list, I got the impression there is simply no 
> place where such messages clearly would go.  gentoo-announce sounds as 
> the best option to go for, but its description somehow suggests not. 
> Though, subscribed to gentoo-announce means you get nothing but GLSA 
> announcements and sometimes a new release announcements.
> 
> So, what list should the user that wants to receive those **important** 
> messages sign up to?
> I still think that *this* is the reason why people don't seem to know 
> about the important changes, because there is no obvious place where to 
> get them.  It's quite likely that a user that wanted to see the 
> new-style apache message didn't see it because it simply didn't appear 
> on a list the user hoped to see it.  It was in the GWN of 2005-09-12, 
> but I can imagine a user didn't expect it to be there, as there is no 
> description at al for GWN list, and the **important** information will 
> always have to be extracted from the GWN, since each GWN covers multiple 
> items in a few categories which not every user might interest.
> 
> Send **important** messages separate to a non-discussion mailing list, 
> and I'm sure that many people will be happy to read it -- just like 
> gentoo-announce.

[/snip]

Above and beyond Ciaran's point...

You are correct, there is no clear cut place for them to go...that's how
this thing got started in the first place. However why force users to
sign up for something which can't be appropriately filtered (installed
packages, keywords, use flags, profiles, etc.) when all of them are
already "signed up" for something that can track and filter, portage.

I wouldn't necessarily bother signing up for an errata list if said list
was going to provide me with *all* the errata out there. The reason that
a mailing list works for RedHat is because RHN tracks what packages you
have installed on your system on *their* server (again something you
have to sign up for, and worse send them info about your configuration),
so the filtering is done for you. We will *never* do something like
this, we have a client side tool that can identify what is installed
already...why not use it?

-- 
Daniel Ostrow
Gentoo Foundation Board of Trustees
Gentoo/{PPC,PPC64,DevRel}
dostrow@g.o

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