Potential mailing list and chat infrastructure changes

[Justin Obara]

Hi everyone,

I?ve recently sent out some messages on the fluid-work matrix channel, but will summarize things here as well. These are related to potential changes to the mailing list and matrix chat.

Mailing list:

We're starting to explore migrating the fluid-work mailing list from mailman to either groups.io <https://groups.io/> or Gaggle Mail <https://gaggle.email/>. These services provide free mailing lists with various limitations. groups.io is limited to less that 100 members while Gaggle has 1000 member limit. In both cases the mailing list address will change as the free tiers do not support custom domains. 

The mailman instance currently being used incurs an annual cost and comes with the same user limit as Gaggle mail. It does allow for a custom domain though.

Matrix Chat:

Matrix is transitioning to a freemium model. It seems they are expecting this transition to complete over the summer. ( see: https://matrix.org/blog/2025/06/funding-homeserver-premium/#when-will-the-new-plans-take-effect ) The details aren't all entirely clear. It seems that their free plans won't include public rooms. ( see: https://matrix.org/homeserver/pricing/ ) However, I'm not sure what that would mean for existing rooms. That being said it's probably best to prepare and begin transitioning to another chat service. At the IDRC we've had an initial talk about exploring zulip <https://zulip.com/plans/>. It looks like, as an open-source project, Fluid should qualify for a free standard plan.

If you have any questions, concerns, or would like to propose any alternatives for these please let us know. 

Thanks
Justin
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