Terri Oda writes:
What would be a good default directory to have in the docs if I want to update them to suggest you start somewhere other than your home directory?
/opt/mailman
is probably the most appropriate one according to the LSB.
+1 It's the only system hierarchy that the FHS lets us decide on the layout.
To fully conform with the FHS, use /opt/mailman requires us to register "mailman" with LANANA (http://www.lanana.org/). N.B. Neither the FSF nor GNU is currently registered, so no, we don't belong in something like /opt/gnu/mailman. (The rationale for that lack is pretty clear -- RMS would blow a cranial artery at the suggestion that GNU is an optional component of a Linux system. :-)
Personally, I'd like to get out of the main hierarchies; splitting things across /etc, /usr and /var is annoying. So /opt/mailman looks really good to me.
Steve