Mailman 3 March 2012 - Mailman-Developers

before next release: disable backscatter in default installation
by Jo Rhett Nov. 7, 2022

Nov. 7, 2022

Hi. There's a fairly simple problem here that needs to be addressed. And it's mostly a documentation/install problem. I'm hoping we can get this resolved before the next release. PROBLEM: Mailman comes out of the box ready to backscatter spam people. Yes, it's easy enough to fix. But because it comes stock this way, and is documented to install this way, most people install it to do this. Those of us who work in abuse departments are tired of hearing "well that's how Mailman works". We also object to having to teach people how to fix their mailman installations because it's not documented in the current manual. This is *exactly* like Sendmail 14 years ago. We didn't accept it then, and Sendmail fixed the problem. RESOLUTION: Mailman default installation should not backscatter in a default configuration. 1. Don't create backscatter aliases for subscribe/unsubscribe/etc by default. Nearly everyone uses web based signup. 2. Discard or hold messages from non-subscribers by default. I would think that it would be perfectly reasonable to have documentation on how to enable the 1980s-style -request / -subscribe etc aliases. However this documentation should have a note that this is against the AUP of nearly every network provider, and enabling it will likely cause them to get listed in various blacklists as a backscatter source. FYI: I know that this goes against the instincts of many old-time mailing list advocates here. But after dealing with a 10k/hour backscatter DoS my tolerance for this problem is understandably limited. Yes, it was a sweet day back in the 1980s. I was running a mailing list server and several UUCP gateways at the time, so I remember them well. But those days are past, and we need to deal with the reality of today. -- Jo Rhett Net Consonance : consonant endings by net philanthropy, open source and other randomness

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Additional Mailman GSoC mentors
by Terri Oda April 3, 2012

April 3, 2012

It's looking like we're going to have more student applicants than in previous years, so I think it'd be great if we could get a few more mentors to match. If you're a semi-active mailman developer (i.e. I'm going to recognize your name from your mailman-developers postings) and you think you might interested in mentoring for GSoC this summer or just want to know what's involved, please get in touch with me! Terri

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GSoC 2012 - NNTP archive access
by Alexander Sulfrian April 1, 2012

April 1, 2012

Hi, I would like to participate at the google summer of code this year for mailman. While reading through the ideas in the wiki, the NNTP archive access look very interesting. I took part in the gsoc last year for vlc, developing a c library for accessing a sony minidisc player from linux. This year vlc unfortunately got rejected from google. What are the next steps you would propose. I unfortunately not up to date with the development of mailman 3. But I am a little bit familiar with the mailman 2 source code. Thanks, Alexander

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GSoC : HyperKitty project
by Aamir Khan March 31, 2012

March 31, 2012

Hi, I am Aamir Khan, 3rd year computer science student. I am applying for GSoC 2012 Project 'Mailman3 HyperKitty archiver project'. I have written a proposal for this project. The proposal can be found here ( http://google-melange.appspot.com/gsoc/proposal/review/google/gsoc2012/syst… ). I would be glad if other developers have a look at it and give some valuable suggestions or any changes. Any sort of improvements / suggestions / comments are welcome! Thanks for your time :) --- Aamir Khan IRC Nick: syst3mw0rm

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Re: [Mailman-Developers] GSoC
by Pierre-Yves Chibon March 30, 2012

March 30, 2012

On Thu, 2012-03-29 at 10:49 +0900, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote: > Hyperkitty is the demo that > a few people have been working on, including Toshio at the sprints, > but there are others in play (eg, recent posts to this list). Also, > Hyperkitty is currently based on somewhat limited technology (the > notmuch indexer). I'm not sure it would be up to the demands of > data-mining. Of course, if Toshio says it is, listen to him, not me. > :-) For the record, the current version of HyperKitty has moved from a notmuch backend to a mongo database allowing a much more flexible data storage scheme. This is the one you can see online at: http://mm3test.fedoraproject.org/ The demo is getting more and more complete with month view, recent activities, thread view, basic search functions and categories. My only problem is that we seem to have some memory leaks at the moment :-/ Pierre

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Re: [Mailman-Developers] GSoC
by Pierre-Yves Chibon March 30, 2012

March 30, 2012

On Fri, 2012-03-30 at 15:46 +0900, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote: > On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 5:48 PM, Pierre-Yves Chibon > <pingou(a)pingoured.fr> wrote: > > > For the record, the current version of HyperKitty has moved from a > > notmuch backend to a mongo database allowing a much more flexible > > data storage scheme. > > Good to know! Is the source available? Yes, The main website: https://fedorahosted.org/hyperkitty/ To browse the sources: http://bzr.fedorahosted.org/bzr/hyperkitty/ (see the mongodb branch for the mongo backend, trunk is still on notmuch) and the demo is still at the same place: http://mm3test.fedoraproject.org/ Pierre

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Re: [Mailman-Developers] GSoC
by Pierre-Yves Chibon March 30, 2012

March 30, 2012

On Thu, 2012-03-29 at 10:49 +0900, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote: > Hyperkitty is the demo that > a few people have been working on, including Toshio at the sprints, > but there are others in play (eg, recent posts to this list). Also, > Hyperkitty is currently based on somewhat limited technology (the > notmuch indexer). I'm not sure it would be up to the demands of > data-mining. Of course, if Toshio says it is, listen to him, not me. > :-) For the record, the current version of HyperKitty has moved from a notmuch backend to a mongo database allowing a much more flexible data storage scheme. This is the one you can see online at: http://mm3test.fedoraproject.org/ The demo is getting more and more complete with month view, recent activities, thread view, basic search functions and categories. My only problem is that we seem to have some memory leaks at the moment :-/ Pierre

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Re: [Mailman-Developers] Google Summer of Code: Integration of Search Code
by Shayan Md March 30, 2012

March 30, 2012

On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 10:48 AM, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen(a)xemacs.org>wrote: > On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 12:24 PM, Shayan Md <mdoshayan(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 5:05 AM, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen(a)xemacs.org > >wrote: > > >> And (2) search and retrieval may > >> do a *lot* of message access, for example if you want to do data > >> mining (see Ana from Spain's thread). > > > Isn't it the purpose of index? > > Yes, of course, but possibly it's not good enough. Yes, when you know > what "features" (eg, author) you want to index. Then you can use an > online algorithm, indexing messages as they come in. However, many > data mining methods are adaptive, meaning that they discover features > of the corpus over time (eg, through "Bayesian" algorithms) and then > wish to go back and reindex or cross-reference previously examined > messages based on more accurate feature specifications. > > As I say, if that's not your purpose, then you don't have to worry > about it. But in some cases it will matter (eg, pretend you're > Google, not just a GSoC student!) > Okay then, can you please tell me how we can put this search code in best use of mailman3? I have a proposal to write, I am getting unsure of things day by day. Can you also tell me who is the mentor of this project? > _______________________________________________ > Mailman-Developers mailing list > Mailman-Developers(a)python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-developers > Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 > Searchable Archives: > http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-developers%40python.org/ > Unsubscribe: > http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-developers/mdoshayan%40gmail… > > Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 >

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Re: [Mailman-Developers] GSoC
by Pierre-Yves Chibon March 30, 2012

March 30, 2012

On Thu, 2012-03-29 at 10:49 +0900, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote: > Hyperkitty is the demo that > a few people have been working on, including Toshio at the sprints, > but there are others in play (eg, recent posts to this list). Also, > Hyperkitty is currently based on somewhat limited technology (the > notmuch indexer). I'm not sure it would be up to the demands of > data-mining. Of course, if Toshio says it is, listen to him, not me. > :-) For the record, the current version of HyperKitty has moved from a notmuch backend to a mongo database allowing a much more flexible data storage scheme. This is the one you can see online at: http://mm3test.fedoraproject.org/ The demo is getting more and more complete with month view, recent activities, thread view, basic search functions and categories. My only problem is that we seem to have some memory leaks at the moment :-/ Pierre

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Re: [Mailman-Developers] Google Summer of Code: Integration of Search Code
by Stephen J. Turnbull March 30, 2012

March 30, 2012

On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 12:24 PM, Shayan Md <mdoshayan(a)gmail.com> wrote: > On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 5:05 AM, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen(a)xemacs.org>wrote: >> And (2) search and retrieval may >> do a *lot* of message access, for example if you want to do data >> mining (see Ana from Spain's thread). > Isn't it the purpose of index? Yes, of course, but possibly it's not good enough. Yes, when you know what "features" (eg, author) you want to index. Then you can use an online algorithm, indexing messages as they come in. However, many data mining methods are adaptive, meaning that they discover features of the corpus over time (eg, through "Bayesian" algorithms) and then wish to go back and reindex or cross-reference previously examined messages based on more accurate feature specifications. As I say, if that's not your purpose, then you don't have to worry about it. But in some cases it will matter (eg, pretend you're Google, not just a GSoC student!)

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