free alternatives to SL's groups?

do you guys know of free services (in world or not, lsl based or not) that provide at least some of the functionalities SL's groups offer? (please don't refrain from mentioning obvious things like mailing lists and foruns, but preferably please provide links to which of the many providers avaiable you would recomend)

Doubt there is any Free services.
Question: Why would you want an alternative?

there sure are free alternatives (IM programs, mailing lists, forums etc), I asking which people here would recommend

as for why, well, to be able to have access to those features without using up the (very) limited amount of group slots we have in SL

www.freeforums.org is pretty good.

What is you want your alternative to do?

SL groups provide a system for allocating powers over land use and other group functions to different ranks. Third party forums, IM clients, etc. aren't going to do that sort of thing.

Right. This reminds me, though, that some scripted objects rely on llSameGroup() to authorize users. This is fairly annoying because scripts are denied access to most group information, so such scripts rely on the *active* group (hence requiring tag changing to operate). And to fine-tune control of different devices by different individuals, a proliferation of groups is the only option for this approach. So, instead, many scripts use notecard authorization lists. Some places have extended this to an "authorization server" that implements full ACL functionality from such notecards, used by multiple devices in different authorization classes.

One could imagine extending that to some more global service, presumably web-hosted, and a set of open script functions to access the service. (No obvious way to "monetize" that service, though--perhaps that's why it doesn't exist, at least AFAIK.)

Yahoo groups comes to mind. http://groups.yahoo.com/.

Depends on what you want the group to do.
Is collaborative work group where you need to exchange images and files?
There other groups type interface systems like Yahoo groups, MSN, google
even private ones forgot the name of the service.
What is exactly that you want the group to do if its not land dependent?
Either way communication systems that exist aren't going to interconnect within
SL unless their is another something out there I don't know about.
The thing is someone doesn't want a group to have their email address and only wants to do SL things in world they may not be to keen to give up email addresses to join.

I wasn't thinking about an specific functionality, I wanna know what options exist out there to be able to judge whether I need to join a certain group or if I may suggest them an alternate system

Ning.com might serve your purpose.

Hard to make useful suggestions with no idea what you want.

I want to know of free services that provide alternatives to at least some of the fucntionalities avaiable on SL's groups

btw, I'm amazed no one mentioned stuff like Subscribe-O-matic (dunno if I wrote the name right)

Subscribe-o-matic is far from free for the person hosting the group.

**edt: unless they approve your non-profit status.

really? I had never looked too much into it, didn't knew it was paid except for approved non-profit uses :/

Yeah, there is a monthly fee for the service, and it goes up based on how many members you have.

Google Apps also has some cool ways to "share information" and "work together" I recall that they have free options, or you can create your own domain for something like $10 US a year

For subscription stuff.. HippoGroups seems to be better positioned (in terms of pricing) than Subscribe-o-matic.. But of your goal is just to maintain a mailing list of people, bioth have monthly fees. I use JVA Bot, which is more of a one-time-fee... and then it's a little program you run in the background on your PC, which is "a bot" (fear)... logs into SL using an alt account that you create.. and allows you to do quite a few very interesting and useful things. (really opens up unique ideas for doing product updates). But that's not precisely free either. (L$3000 one time fee... cheaper than the subscription options though).... and your bot can sit in your shop, and model your outfits.. so that's kind of a win-win.

Zoho has some stuff that might be of interest. Zoho.com.