At 6:35 PM -0800 12/14/00, J C Lawrence wrote:
except I see this as still part of the MLM, since it's the tool doing the MLM->MTA handoff, not part of the MTA itself.
We need to define what an MLM is and does:
Here's how I define the MLM: it has access to a subscriber database, and when a piece of email is received it is in charge of deciding who it is sent to, and generating the content necessary to have ti delivered. Optionally, it manages the subscriber database.
that means that the MTA sees that the mail is addressed to a list and hands it off to MLM. The MLM owns it until it hands the outbound mail to the MTA for delivery. it does everything except acceptance into the system and delivery back out.
Actual delivery of messages, MTAs, transports, authentication mechanisms, membership definitions, account definitions, etc, are really outside of its purview.
The MLM is really an overriding architecture that handles content flow from reception through delivery (but not including delivery), and all of the support subsystems to make that possible. The key one is subscriber maintenance, but archival, digesting, bounce processing are all also part of the MLM archictecture, even if they're managed by external subsystems through a defined API. what's internal and what's external comes down to needs and how strongly you want stuff integrated. As we webify everything (even email), integration and (dare I say it! I dare!) convergence tend to encourage that strong integration (and that we're even thinking of using Zope pieces here shows how far that integration is infiltrating real life already...)
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