At 5:01 PM +0900 2005-04-30, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
Any subscriber might be keeping and publishing an archive of the list posts.
True enough.
If the listmaster doesn't like that, he should be vetting eachsubscription, and making sure that each subscriber understands the rules.
We do that as much as we can. We don't really care about some of
the lists, but there are others we care about a great deal.
In the particular case of Gmane, I think they either added our
lists to their archives at a time when their policies weren't so clear, or they did so before I became the listmaster, and the people who were around for that role did not remember any conversations with the Gmane people.
This actually answers most of yourworries, 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?
If I could guarantee that I always had full control over that
process, from my end and without requiring any intervention on the part of personnel at Gmane (or mail-archive.com, or whomever), then I'd be happy with that part.
The second is that this patch evidently constitutes a significant endorsement of The Mail Archive.
I had thought about that too, but I couldn't come up with
anything more than a recognition of the fact, so I didn't mention it. My original response was unclear enough as it was, and I knew it -- I didn't want to muddy the waters further.
... 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.
Good questions. I don't think I have any answers.