At 11:01 PM -0400 8/16/00, Philip Guenther is rumored to have typed:
The maintainer is not the leader. The job of maintainer is to express the concensus desire in a machine readable form.
Since you appear to be doing the bulk of the coding, you are indeed the "leader," whether you necessarily want to be or not. It was the _lack_ of leadership is what got us into this mess in the first place. (I am _not_ picking on Stephen here. The _only_ gripe I have with him is that he didn't secure the future of the code and the lists before he moved on; I remember the long period where _no one,_ including you, was really in charge of the code. I do _not_ fault him for moving on to other projects at all, I simply wish he would have spent 20-minutes or so properly closing things down and transfering those responsibilities necessary.)
Anyway, I don't really care what software is used to run this list
Personally, I don't, either. But look at it from the newbie's perspective; "I want to install and use SmartList...but gee, the people who run the SmartList support list don't even trust it to operate their _own_ list!"
Exactly what does that say about SmartList to the newbie?
As for moving this list, I can tell you what it'll take:
Personally, I disagree completely. What it _should_ take is:
1) Someone volunteers, and is annointed by you to operate the list. (Consider this a volunteer, although there are others more capable than I to operate the list.)
2) Stephen transfers the dist lists he _should_ have passed on to someone who would properly maintain them a long time ago, and redirects the forwards. Or better, transfers the domain to you to be quit of it.
3) RWTH-Aachen.DE closes down the lists they don't want to run anyway...or don't, since these lists will rapidly become irrelevant anyway.
Much simpler than your method, which involves asking people for permission to do something they shouldn't be grantint permission for, anyway. Bottom line, RWTH-Aachen.DE doesn't have _any_ connection to SmartList or procmail anymore, and shouldn't be operating the lists. Unless, of course, you _want_ them to; again, like it or not, you _are_ the one who should make these decisions. (It is impossible for committees to come to _any_ rapid agreements, and it's equally impossible for hundreds of mailing list subscribers to do so. And to think otherwise is foolish.) If _you_ choose to have them operate them, fine..but they have absolutely no connection to the software packages anymore. Heck, they don't even use 'em.
Charlie