A thought on mailing lists

I have never really been active on mailing lists except the one that my friends and I have on yahoogroups. There, it's more of a barkada thing: some announcements regarding outings, meet-ups and assorted stuff. It's our way of communicating aside from SMS and IM.

Lately, I have been re-introduced to Open Source Software and Linux, in particular. Because of these things, I have signed up for various mailing lists such as the PLUG mailing list for newbies and the Emacs-Wiki. There I have posted some questions and I found a community of people who are very helpful. The previous post I had regarding the tarball installation, a lot of people gave their thoughts and tips. Even on the Emacs-Wiki discussion list, I have received some helpful tips as well. I guess this is one thing that the open source software enthusiasts have gotten me into: a sense of community wherein everyone helps each other the best way they can. And I really like it. ^_^ It's a community that I don't see on a personal day-to-day basis but it is a community nonetheless. I guess this is what makes open source advance into the lives of people.

Anyhow, I have gotten some really great tips from them. It now makes me feel more comfortable in learning Linux and other open source software. I hope that my experience in learning would encourage others to try it out and maybe like it as well.

Emacs Planner Mode is something I really find useful. I am so glad that there's a group of people on the net who are actually talking about it a lot. I am a lurker on the mailing list but I glean from their emails and learn bits and pieces here and there. It's a wonderful thing, really.

I hope that other people would also find such great communities online, and in real life, in the sense that they would see each other personally. It is a wonderful thing indeed^_^

PS: This is one nice link I got from one of the people on the Emacs-Wiki discussion groups: http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/PlannerModeContrib

posted by eClair @ 02:48