Hello GNU Mailman Community,

I am part of an undergraduate research group focusing on software architecture patterns and quality attributes at Utah Valley University. We recently analyzed the work published on GNU Mailman in the Architecture of Open Source Applications <http://aosabook.org/en/index.html> (AOSA) and referenced it in a paper we presented at the 13th Working IEEE/IFIP Conference on Software Architecture (WICSA), as attached. As a part of our continuing research we wish to validate our architectural analysis for GNU Mailman with the current developers.

We would like to know if we are missing any patterns or quality attributes that may have been included in GNU Mailman, or if there are any we listed that aren’t used. Any additional comment on these topics you might have would also, of course, be welcome.

We believe we found the following software architectural patterns in this application:

• Pattern Name | Is This Found in the Architecture? (yes / no / don't know) | Comments (optional)*

Client Server Layers Master and Commander Pipes and Filters Shared Repository Simple Repository

Other?

We also identified the following quality attributes:

• Attribute Name | Is This Found in the Architecture? | Comments (optional)*

Scalability Extensibility Performance Portability Reliability

Other?

For your convenience, we have a complete list below of the patterns and quality attributes we referred to when conducting our research. To clarify, we are specifically studying architectural patterns, rather than design patterns such as the GoF patterns.

Architectural Patterns Considered

Quality Attributes Considered

Active Repository

Scalability

Batch

Usability

Blackboard

Extensibility

Broker

Performance

Client Server

Portability

Event System

Flexibility

Explicit Invocation

Reliability

Implicit Invocation

Maintainability

Indirection Layer

Security

Interceptor

Testability

Interpreter

Capacity

Layers

Cost

Master and Commander

Legality

Microkernel

Modularity

Model View Controller

Robustness

Peer to Peer

Pipes and Filters

Plugin

Presentation Abstraction Control

Publish Subscribe

Reflection

Rule-Based System

Shared Repository

Simple Repository

State Based

Virtual Machine

Please respond by October 25th, if possible.

Thank you for considering our request, and for your continued work on GNU Mailman.

Sincerely,

Michael Skeen, with

Erich Gubler,

Danielle Skinner,

Brandon Leishman,

Neil Harrison, Ph.D. (advisor)

Reference: Neil B. Harrison, Erich Gubler, Danielle Skinner, "Software Architecture Pattern Morphology in Open-Source Systems",WICSA, 2016, 2016 13th Working IEEE/IFIP Conference on Software Architecture (WICSA), 2016 13th Working IEEE/IFIP Conference on Software Architecture (WICSA) 2016, pp. 91-98, doi:10.1109/WICSA.2016.8