"Brad" == Brad Knowles brad@stop.mail-abuse.org writes:
Brad> Lars was nice enough to comply with our request to
Brad> remove our lists from gmane, but these kinds of operations
Brad> should not be done without a positive and explicit approval
Brad> from the listmaster.
Any subscriber might be keeping and publishing an archive of the list posts. If the listmaster doesn't like that, he should be vetting each subscription, and making sure that each subscriber understands the rules. [Otherwise ... under copyright law, the listmaster has no interest in the posts. That implies that if the posters get upset about this, the listmaster is liable, as well as (and maybe more so) the 3rd party archiver.] I don't see why Gmane or the Mail Archive should have to obey special rules here.
I think there are two issues here. The first is privacy. That is served simply by defaulting this feature off, and documenting whatever the policy of The Mail Archive is in the configuration process, and advising caution on the part of list admins, as they might be legally liable for 3rd party misbehavior. This actually answers most of your worries, Brad; ie, if Gmane gatewaying were part of the Mailman configuration process rather than at Gmane's option, your ntp lists would never have been gatewayed and archived, right?
And the default and the docs are under mailman-developers control. I'm sure that if Jeff & Jeff didn't like the blurb because it was too accurate :-), Barry would be happy to remove the patch, but surely he wouldn't cover up potential problems in the doc or turn it on by default.
The second is that this patch evidently constitutes a significant endorsement of The Mail Archive. As I understand Jeff's post, he went to the trouble of asking Lars if he would like a similar setup added for Gmane, patch to be coded by Jeff || Jeff. I have to admit that somebody who would go to that much trouble to implement the same feature for a close substitute sounds pretty endorsable to me!
... if Mailman is going to endorse services that way. I don't really think it's a good idea in principle, though. What happens if The Mail Archive goes away or goes proprietary? What are people going to think if The Mail Archive's maintainers hire Barry or Brad? Etc, etc.
On the pro side, there is the point that this would make such mirroring an opt-in on the listmaster's side, which is good. So it might be worth Mailman thinking about under what conditions it would be good to make such an endorsement, and adding anybody who satisfied those conditions.
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