As everyone probably knows, opencobol.org has been shutdown for new registrations for quite a while now.

This has to change, and as for the reasons, it is simply spambots. Overwhelming spambots. Placing the forum is 'request registration via email' just ended up flooding mail boxes of people that cannot afford the time to filter through all the crap.

So...

We are now on a quest to find a hosted forum solution. I should have been on this task earlier, but life doesn't offer up too many large segments of time now-a-days.

I'm going to ask this august forum for opinions on a hosted forum provider that plays nice with open source and may be willing to offer a freebie to the OpenCOBOL community. My attempts at setting up a temporary forum for membership registrations failed for the same spambot reasons, I'm fighting off 40 a day and can't afford the time. This is with modern anti-spambot tools, and it seems spammers are more willing to put in more time than people that actually want to produce software and provide support.

So, know of any providers? I'd rather the professionals spend time fighting bots so we all can get on with getting on.

For example http://www.zoho.jp/discussions/open-source.html is a possibility and in line with what we may be looking for.

I have an 'on my behalf' from Keisuke and I don't want to pester him anymore than absolutely necessary, so if we can find something, I have some power in getting things moved there before a possible DNS cutover.

I'll apologize a little for this taking so long, but please bear with and know that things ARE moving.

I will try and keep my promise to those that register at http://forum.peoplecards.ca, but man what a hassle. There are more delays than there should be.

Cheers,
Brian

Bumping.

Take a look at http://sourceforge.net/projects/tiny-cobol/forums and see if you think source-forge forums could be used for open-cobol discussions.

We can likely get one of the project owners, Bernard Giroud perhaps, to turn up the forum feature on the existent open-cobol project. http://sourceforge.net/projects/open-cobol/

All; the opencobol.org site move will effect everyone, so I'd really appreciate feedback on choices and preferences.

I'd like everyone to try and walk a mile in the shoes of the good people that aren't yet members, and can't get in to opencobol.org. It'll seem more time critical and a whole lotta frustrating from that perspective.

Cheers,
Brian

@brian The sourceforge environment could be good for sharing message using the forum feature. Also could be appreciable also get from the sourceforge them the latest version of the code (1.1) and (why not?) the build for windows for example the nice build that Gary Cutler uploaded at opencobol wiki assorted documents. compiling opencobol on a unix environment is almost simple..not doing the same on window.

@all The tiny cobol has been stopped to be updated. The opencobol seems to be (still) the latest available.. So please give your contribute for improving the project.


Federico