“Open Knowledge Foundation will be closing down their mailman lists by January 31st, 2020….Instead they will focus on offering a Discourse forum (https://discuss.okfn.org) which already has an open science category: https://discuss.okfn.org/c/working-groups/open-science
There are two things for members of this list to think about: 1 – where are the important conversations on open science happening now? What new lists should we join as this one closes and are there gaps that need to be filled? 2 – where to preserve the list archives? Open Knowledge Foundation do not plan to do so publicly and there is value (I think) in preserving conversations dating back 12 years to a time when open science was at a completely different level of development. If anyone has ideas or could help with archiving that would be great – I have asked for a copy to be kept but I don’t know in what form it will arrive!
As a very early member of this list I think it played an important role in developing an open science community that has spun into many active and exciting communities around the world. Moving on is not a bad thing and there are so many more communication channels to connect on open science topics than back in 2008 – I’d love to hear your recommendations! …
The decision has come about for three reasons:
1. Managing the mailing lists and keeping the infrastructure up to date represents an effort in terms of resources and administration time that Open Knowledge Foundation is unable to meet going forward.
2. GDPR: EU legislation now requires us to have an active and current knowledge of the data held on our websites, as well as the consent of the subscribers regarding the use of their personal data, to ensure GDPR compliance. Unfortunately, Mailman mailing lists don’t comply with this Directive, which means we can’t use this tool any more.
3. We are currently implementing a new strategy within Open Knowledge Foundation which will focus the organisation on several key themes, namely Education, Health and Work. We want to keep fostering conversations but let groups choose what the best platform is for that.”