Dear friends,
I had *no idea* my post was going to generate this level of response. Thank you all. I'm simply fascinated by the dynamics in the group, inspired by your generosity, and eager to help out in any way I can. Let me make a few brief points, then forward another message I just sent to another list which is inspired by this discussion and by a number of other ongoing threads that seem to be coming together right now and make for what I think is a tremendous opportunity for those of us interested in this yahoogroups type functionality.
I am not a coder. I am very into open source software, though, and have been for a long time. I have installed many open source tools on the Kabissa server over the years which are used very actively by people in Africa working for nonprofits. This includes Mailman, phpbb, horde and more. I am able to hack around in existing scripts and follow instructions to do limited customization. I've had Mailman running on Kabissa for over four years now, and have many thousands of posts in list archives and tens of thousands of subscribers participating in lists hosted on Kabissa.
I am currently dedicated to taking all of these disparate tools that people are making great use of on Kabissa, and integrating them into a single community Web site so that they can use them better. I am therefore interested in Mambo CMS (http://www.mamboserver.com) and am eager to encourage any efforts that will enable me to take existing Kabissa services (like Mailman) and integrate them into Mambo components (existing or new).
This is the background to my post about making Mailman CAN-SPAM compliant. It helps to know that there are developers interested in addressing usability issues and also to have confirmed that there is a general understanding that Mailman can be improved.
As Brad mentioned, he is now volunteering at Kabissa on mailman administration.. which is great! With his involvement, there are some small contributions Kabissa can make as relates to helping others to make Mailman work well in a plesk/qmail setup like ours, and which I'd like to see incorporated in future versions of Plesk. However, I think Kabissa may be able to help more by drumming up interest in Mailman, by partnering with other likeminded organizations seeking the same functionality like Bellanet, and perhaps by raising funds to pay for the development of some key features that Kabissa needs particularly urgently.
Best wishes,
Tobias
On Feb 17, 2005, at 9:33 AM, Tokio Kikuchi wrote:
Hi,
Sorry I'm responding late. We had presentations of master theses and I had to look after 3 out of 8 students for qualification. Moreover, 2 students are Chinese and difficulty in expressing themselves in Japanese. (Like myself in English :-( )
Adrian Bye wrote:
http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=show&file=faq04.039.htp Yesterday I contributed patches which enables Mailman to have this exact functionality which we borrowed from Yahoo Groups. Yet I've seen no response from you yet, and only one half dismissive response from another mailman developer.
I looked through your code and my feeling is not integrating this patch in 2.1.6. The Decorate.py file was considerably patched in CVS by myself and it will take time to adjust the submitted 2.1.5 patch. Also, there are some functions copied from other sources not importing nor inheriting. And, if you write code for immediate integration in the CVS, you should read http://barry.warsaw.us/software/STYLEGUIDE.txt and PEP 8, or at least read the existing code and learn the style.
Mailman CAN be as good - and better - than Yahoo Groups. It doesn't have to take lots of money and resources. Just being willing to accept our code a piece at a time, and encouraging those who contribute will go a long way towards getting there. There may be some disagreement on the unsubscribe styff, but the header/footer handling only benefits everyone. I certainly hope that the mailman team will be responsive, and accept these patches and integrate them into the codebase. From my side we'll do whatever it takes to make that happen. Just tell us what we have to do.
I think the patch should be available in the SF tracker and tested by users who want the functionality. Number of unofficial patches are living like this. It took two years for my first patch (subject prefix numbering) to be integrated in the CVS. ;-)
-- Tokio Kikuchi, tkikuchi@ is.kochi-u.ac.jp http://weather.is.kochi-u.ac.jp/
-- Tobias Eigen Executive Director
Kabissa - Space for Change in Africa http://www.kabissa.org
- Kabissa's vision is for a socially, economically, politically, and environmentally vibrant Africa, supported by a strong network of effective civil society organizations. *