Ask HN: Why open-source prefers Google Groups as discussion engine?

If you ask around, you'll find that most of the people running Google Groups either hate or dislike Google Groups, however when their groups were first started it had a low-entry cost: it was free of charge and Google handled most of the annoyances of running a mailing list. New groups get added because it is still simpler than running your own mailing list.

http://ejohn.org/blog/google-groups-is-dead/

One should never underestimate the power of inertia.

Thanks.

> running your own mailing list

As I understand its key feature is posting and reading via email? But does it make sense in the era of StackOverflow and Quora?

They're free and they work reasonably well. They're not substantially better or worse than the other freely available mailing list services, in my experience. For projects that don't feel like running their own server and hosting a Mailman (or whatever) instance, they work fine.

It's simple. It works. It's free.