![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/a98bab7300e14f122ea0dab95f5d10aa.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
dear Mailman, I currently use your Mailman software at work , through my univesity system, and a fabulous system it is indeed. Do you have any equivalent software that would work on the web, but not using the linux operating system? Anything more user friendly for us computer morons?
Cheers
======================================================== Sandra Maynard Training & Extension Officer Centre for Land Rehabilitation University of WA 35 Stirling H'Way , CRAWLEY , WA , 6009 Australia Ph : 08 9380 3827 International: + 61 8 9380 3827 Fax: 08 9380 1050 " : + 61 8 9380 1050
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Email to:<mailto:sandra.maynard@uwa.edu.au>
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Sandra Maynard <smaynard@agric.uwa.edu.au> wrote:
To be quite accurate, "Linux" is the name of a kernel which is an important part of the operating system; the whole system should properly be called GNU/Linux.
Anything more user friendly for us computer morons?
Mailman is part of the GNU system (which, when combined with the kernel called Linux, gives you GNU/Linux ).
We're working on making the GNU system more user-friendly to users who are not so technically inclined. (As a matter of fact the GNU system is already very user friendly to users like me who like editing configuration files in Emacs, etc. It could be said that our system is just too selective in choosing its friends :-)
The main point about GNU has always been to create a complete operating system which is completely Free Software, for details please refer to http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-history.html
Would you be willing to help us with making the GNU system more friendly to users like you?
Greetings, Norbert.
-- A founder of the http://DotGNU.org project and Steering Committee member Norbert Bollow, Weidlistr.18, CH-8624 Gruet (near Zurich, Switzerland) Tel +41 1 972 20 59 Fax +41 1 972 20 69 http://norbert.ch List hosting with GNU Mailman on your own domain name http://cisto.com
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/66b5916e442358059080a0c4799fc44c.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
[I do not plan to answer mails on this thread]
On Wed, May 01, 2002 at 11:22:26AM +0200, Norbert Bollow wrote:
Please don't start this advocaty here because I will tell you what I think of Stallman, his pig-headedness, and his ridiculous attempts at begging for credit left and right. RMS does deserve lots of credit, but begging for it, especially in cases where it's questionable is very lame and completely discredits him.
Barry has made the choice to call the project he maintains "Mailman, the GNU Mailing List Manager" That's his right, it's his software
Linus calls his project Linux, and so do I. Debian has decided to call their distribution, GNU/Linux, they can do that. I've also decided that RMS has annoyed me enough that I did a s#GNU/Linux#Linux# all over my debian systems, and I can do that too.
The short version is: spare us the advocacy here, because I (and others) can give you counterpoints for each of your points, and it's completely off topic for this list.
And you also know that linux wasn't meant to be part of the GNU system (and still isn't if you ask Linus), and that RMS only started cligging to it when the hurd kernel project didn't really go anywhere, but you knew that. Incidently, the Revolution OS movie gives a good neutral point of view of this, and lets people decide for themselves.
Marc
Microsoft is to operating systems & security .... .... what McDonalds is to gourmet cooking
Home page: http://marc.merlins.org/ | Finger marc_f@merlins.org for PGP key
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/07162c0ad780194f4e20d9136d9cae8a.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Marc MERLIN <marc_news@vasoftware.com> wrote:
Please don't start this advocaty here because I will tell you what I think of Stallman, his [INSULTS DELETED]
[..]
Actually, as a matter of fact, even though I agree with Richard Stallman on most of his points about Free Software, most of the time I'm not much of an advocate.
However, when someone (like smaynard@agric.uwa.edu.au did) points out a perceived need for having Mailman available on an OS which is "user friendly" to "morons", then I think that it's quite appropriate to explain that we (the folks behind the GNU project) are interested in making our system more user-friendly from the perspective of all kinds of users, but in general we're not very interested in porting GNU packages so that they can be used on proprietary operating systems.
The whole point of the GNU project is to create an operating system that is completely Free Software. Therefore, it is only proper to inform users of GNU software that this is our goal.
Greetings, Norbert.
-- A founder of the http://DotGNU.org project and Steering Committee member Norbert Bollow, Weidlistr.18, CH-8624 Gruet (near Zurich, Switzerland) Tel +41 1 972 20 59 Fax +41 1 972 20 69 http://norbert.ch List hosting with GNU Mailman on your own domain name http://cisto.com
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/66b5916e442358059080a0c4799fc44c.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Sat, May 04, 2002 at 02:45:37AM +0200, Norbert Bollow wrote:
The only reason I'm answering here is that I wouldn't want people to think I disagree with that. I don't disagree with most of the goals of the GNU project. Like I told Barry, I GPL my code.
I just get annoyed when I see people trying to pressure others into saying Free Software instead of Open Source or "GNU/Linux" when Linus has made it clear that he never wrote linux to be part of the GNU project (he couldn't care less), or when only 10-15 packages on my linux distribution are part of the GNU project (most others are GPLed software, but aren't part of the GNU project. However, yes most of those 10-15 packages are essential, from fileutils from gcc, but so are *many* other packages on my debian system).
I think we all agree that open source (or free software if you want to call it that) is good, and that furthering such systems in order to reach more users is good.
Arguing about forcing people to give credit, when it's debatable since *many* other people and projects deserve credit too, is lame, especially on this list where it's clearly off topic. (BTW, you never ask for credit, you get it or you don't. Sometimes you deserve it and don't get it. Such is life. Pointing out repeatetly that you are "owed" that credit is the _last_ thing you should be doing, you will only discredit yourself, and I'm afraid to say that RMS has done a fine job of that. Jordan Hubbard is a model example of someone who's humble that way)
Marc
PS: Please flame me off list :)
Microsoft is to operating systems & security .... .... what McDonalds is to gourmet cooking
Home page: http://marc.merlins.org/ | Finger marc_f@merlins.org for PGP key
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/1be385016e7c6dcd5eb874cc8be7c13b.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Marc MERLIN <marc_news@vasoftware.com> wrote:
For Richard Stallman's response to this criticism, see e.g. http://norbert.ch/free-software.html#credit
Absolutely.
But I didn't "argue about forcing people to give credit". I answered a question (about the availablily of Mailman for operating systems that are "user friendly" to "morons") and in my answer I had to explain what "GNU" (as in "GNU Mailman") has to do with "Linux", how else would the questioner understand what my answer has to do with the question!
So I mentioned something like that "Linux (kernel) + GNU (in this context meaning the GNU system, i.e. a certain well-defined collection of software ) gives a complete OS which should properly be called GNU/Linux".
If (as you say) whatever you're running as OS on your machines contains only a few GNU packages, then I think that there's nothing wrong when you call it with a name that doesn't mention GNU.
But I didn't refer to whatever you may be running on your machines. I was referring to what the GNU project is doing.
Surely you won't deny that the GNU project (I'm a GNU maintainer, although in an area not directly related to Mailman) has the right to say "when what we're doing is combined with the Linux kernel, then the result should properly be called GNU/Linux." (Whether or not this has something to do with whatever you're running on your machines, that _in_my_opinion_ is best decided by you and by you alone :-)
BTW even if someone uses just the GNU system plus the kernel named Linux and no other packages, no-one is forcing people to give credit to GNU. You have the right to use any name for our system. And you have every right to create a variant and call it e.g. LING for "Linux Is Not GNU" :-)
Denying a reasonable request for credit is IMO ethically a bad thing to do, but there's nothing in the GNU General Public License (or anywhere else) that would try to _force_ people to give credit to the GNU project.
BTW, you never ask for credit, you get it or you don't. Sometimes you deserve it and don't get it. Such is life.
Yes.
And still, sometimes it makes sense to ask for credit.
Asking for credit may make us look bad in your eyes, but the overall effect in relation to achieving the goals of the GNU project is still positive, that's why the GNU project has a policy of asking for credit.
(NOTE: This is probably my last posting on this topic for a very long time... I'm not much of an advocate :-)
Greetings, Norbert.
-- A founder of the http://DotGNU.org project and Steering Committee member Norbert Bollow, Weidlistr.18, CH-8624 Gruet (near Zurich, Switzerland) Tel +41 1 972 20 59 Fax +41 1 972 20 69 http://norbert.ch List hosting with GNU Mailman on your own domain name http://cisto.com
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/a930430c7f9705b71a65f341c4191a2b.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
"MM" == Marc MERLIN <marc_news@vasoftware.com> writes:
MM> Barry has made the choice to call the project he maintains
MM> "Mailman, the GNU Mailing List Manager"
MM> That's his right, it's his software
Just a minor correction, because I agree with Marc that in general, this kind of discussion is off-topic for this list.
John Viega invented Mailman back in oh, 1997 or so (my earliest email on the subject is circa mid-97). At the time it wasn't even called Mailman -- I don't think John had a name for it. Because it was written in Python and because we were so frustrated with Majordomo, we adopted it for the sigs on python.org. John originally had a very simple and very liberal license.
As the s/w developed, there was some discussion about what to call it, and how to license it. I believed at the time that the GPL was the best license to choose, and that we could increase its visibility, publicity, and popularity by positioning it within the GNU project. The GPL isn't right for everything (e.g. I think it would be fatally wrong for Python itself to ever be GPL'd), but it's perfect for Mailman. Ultimately, it was John's decision, but I did lobby for that outcome, and I think I was right about how the GNU project would help Mailman get to where it is today. For that reason, I have no problem calling it "GNU Mailman" where pressed to be precise.
sleepi-ly, -Barry
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/d732d15d8debc34c8b5f3fdc8db02d62.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Interesting discussion. I don't think anyone pointed out to the original questioner that mailman seems to work on any number of Unix-ish platforms (since he asked for a non-Linux OS): I'm playing with it in another window on OpenBSD on Sparc at the moment.
I don't want to get into an elaborate discussion of the credit given vs. credit asked for vs. credit taken mess, except to make a couple of general comments:
Sometimes folks who should get the credit don't -- because they never asked for it and nobody really knew to give it to them.
Sometimes folks get credit for something despite their best honest efforts to disclaim it.
Sometimes it's unclear, even to the people doing the work, who should get credit for it. This gets really complicated as we build on each others' work, whether in terms of code, protocols, interfaces, or ideas.
Thankfully, most people really do make an effort to try to claim the appropriate amount of credit and disclaim any more.
---Rsk
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/394ff8a394a1152399081d0ce6abdb5f.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Sandra Maynard wrote:
I think Mailman runs on nearly every modern Unix like system. I'm running it on Sun Solaris and I know that it runs also on Free- and OpenBSD.
It might even work on MacOS X. That could be the thing you are looking for... (forget Windows ;)
Cheers, Juri
-- If each of us have one object, and we exchange them, then each of us still has one object. If each of us have one idea, and we exchange them, then each of us now has two ideas.
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/1be385016e7c6dcd5eb874cc8be7c13b.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Sandra Maynard <smaynard@agric.uwa.edu.au> wrote:
To be quite accurate, "Linux" is the name of a kernel which is an important part of the operating system; the whole system should properly be called GNU/Linux.
Anything more user friendly for us computer morons?
Mailman is part of the GNU system (which, when combined with the kernel called Linux, gives you GNU/Linux ).
We're working on making the GNU system more user-friendly to users who are not so technically inclined. (As a matter of fact the GNU system is already very user friendly to users like me who like editing configuration files in Emacs, etc. It could be said that our system is just too selective in choosing its friends :-)
The main point about GNU has always been to create a complete operating system which is completely Free Software, for details please refer to http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-history.html
Would you be willing to help us with making the GNU system more friendly to users like you?
Greetings, Norbert.
-- A founder of the http://DotGNU.org project and Steering Committee member Norbert Bollow, Weidlistr.18, CH-8624 Gruet (near Zurich, Switzerland) Tel +41 1 972 20 59 Fax +41 1 972 20 69 http://norbert.ch List hosting with GNU Mailman on your own domain name http://cisto.com
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/66b5916e442358059080a0c4799fc44c.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
[I do not plan to answer mails on this thread]
On Wed, May 01, 2002 at 11:22:26AM +0200, Norbert Bollow wrote:
Please don't start this advocaty here because I will tell you what I think of Stallman, his pig-headedness, and his ridiculous attempts at begging for credit left and right. RMS does deserve lots of credit, but begging for it, especially in cases where it's questionable is very lame and completely discredits him.
Barry has made the choice to call the project he maintains "Mailman, the GNU Mailing List Manager" That's his right, it's his software
Linus calls his project Linux, and so do I. Debian has decided to call their distribution, GNU/Linux, they can do that. I've also decided that RMS has annoyed me enough that I did a s#GNU/Linux#Linux# all over my debian systems, and I can do that too.
The short version is: spare us the advocacy here, because I (and others) can give you counterpoints for each of your points, and it's completely off topic for this list.
And you also know that linux wasn't meant to be part of the GNU system (and still isn't if you ask Linus), and that RMS only started cligging to it when the hurd kernel project didn't really go anywhere, but you knew that. Incidently, the Revolution OS movie gives a good neutral point of view of this, and lets people decide for themselves.
Marc
Microsoft is to operating systems & security .... .... what McDonalds is to gourmet cooking
Home page: http://marc.merlins.org/ | Finger marc_f@merlins.org for PGP key
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/07162c0ad780194f4e20d9136d9cae8a.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Marc MERLIN <marc_news@vasoftware.com> wrote:
Please don't start this advocaty here because I will tell you what I think of Stallman, his [INSULTS DELETED]
[..]
Actually, as a matter of fact, even though I agree with Richard Stallman on most of his points about Free Software, most of the time I'm not much of an advocate.
However, when someone (like smaynard@agric.uwa.edu.au did) points out a perceived need for having Mailman available on an OS which is "user friendly" to "morons", then I think that it's quite appropriate to explain that we (the folks behind the GNU project) are interested in making our system more user-friendly from the perspective of all kinds of users, but in general we're not very interested in porting GNU packages so that they can be used on proprietary operating systems.
The whole point of the GNU project is to create an operating system that is completely Free Software. Therefore, it is only proper to inform users of GNU software that this is our goal.
Greetings, Norbert.
-- A founder of the http://DotGNU.org project and Steering Committee member Norbert Bollow, Weidlistr.18, CH-8624 Gruet (near Zurich, Switzerland) Tel +41 1 972 20 59 Fax +41 1 972 20 69 http://norbert.ch List hosting with GNU Mailman on your own domain name http://cisto.com
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/66b5916e442358059080a0c4799fc44c.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Sat, May 04, 2002 at 02:45:37AM +0200, Norbert Bollow wrote:
The only reason I'm answering here is that I wouldn't want people to think I disagree with that. I don't disagree with most of the goals of the GNU project. Like I told Barry, I GPL my code.
I just get annoyed when I see people trying to pressure others into saying Free Software instead of Open Source or "GNU/Linux" when Linus has made it clear that he never wrote linux to be part of the GNU project (he couldn't care less), or when only 10-15 packages on my linux distribution are part of the GNU project (most others are GPLed software, but aren't part of the GNU project. However, yes most of those 10-15 packages are essential, from fileutils from gcc, but so are *many* other packages on my debian system).
I think we all agree that open source (or free software if you want to call it that) is good, and that furthering such systems in order to reach more users is good.
Arguing about forcing people to give credit, when it's debatable since *many* other people and projects deserve credit too, is lame, especially on this list where it's clearly off topic. (BTW, you never ask for credit, you get it or you don't. Sometimes you deserve it and don't get it. Such is life. Pointing out repeatetly that you are "owed" that credit is the _last_ thing you should be doing, you will only discredit yourself, and I'm afraid to say that RMS has done a fine job of that. Jordan Hubbard is a model example of someone who's humble that way)
Marc
PS: Please flame me off list :)
Microsoft is to operating systems & security .... .... what McDonalds is to gourmet cooking
Home page: http://marc.merlins.org/ | Finger marc_f@merlins.org for PGP key
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/1be385016e7c6dcd5eb874cc8be7c13b.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Marc MERLIN <marc_news@vasoftware.com> wrote:
For Richard Stallman's response to this criticism, see e.g. http://norbert.ch/free-software.html#credit
Absolutely.
But I didn't "argue about forcing people to give credit". I answered a question (about the availablily of Mailman for operating systems that are "user friendly" to "morons") and in my answer I had to explain what "GNU" (as in "GNU Mailman") has to do with "Linux", how else would the questioner understand what my answer has to do with the question!
So I mentioned something like that "Linux (kernel) + GNU (in this context meaning the GNU system, i.e. a certain well-defined collection of software ) gives a complete OS which should properly be called GNU/Linux".
If (as you say) whatever you're running as OS on your machines contains only a few GNU packages, then I think that there's nothing wrong when you call it with a name that doesn't mention GNU.
But I didn't refer to whatever you may be running on your machines. I was referring to what the GNU project is doing.
Surely you won't deny that the GNU project (I'm a GNU maintainer, although in an area not directly related to Mailman) has the right to say "when what we're doing is combined with the Linux kernel, then the result should properly be called GNU/Linux." (Whether or not this has something to do with whatever you're running on your machines, that _in_my_opinion_ is best decided by you and by you alone :-)
BTW even if someone uses just the GNU system plus the kernel named Linux and no other packages, no-one is forcing people to give credit to GNU. You have the right to use any name for our system. And you have every right to create a variant and call it e.g. LING for "Linux Is Not GNU" :-)
Denying a reasonable request for credit is IMO ethically a bad thing to do, but there's nothing in the GNU General Public License (or anywhere else) that would try to _force_ people to give credit to the GNU project.
BTW, you never ask for credit, you get it or you don't. Sometimes you deserve it and don't get it. Such is life.
Yes.
And still, sometimes it makes sense to ask for credit.
Asking for credit may make us look bad in your eyes, but the overall effect in relation to achieving the goals of the GNU project is still positive, that's why the GNU project has a policy of asking for credit.
(NOTE: This is probably my last posting on this topic for a very long time... I'm not much of an advocate :-)
Greetings, Norbert.
-- A founder of the http://DotGNU.org project and Steering Committee member Norbert Bollow, Weidlistr.18, CH-8624 Gruet (near Zurich, Switzerland) Tel +41 1 972 20 59 Fax +41 1 972 20 69 http://norbert.ch List hosting with GNU Mailman on your own domain name http://cisto.com
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/a930430c7f9705b71a65f341c4191a2b.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
"MM" == Marc MERLIN <marc_news@vasoftware.com> writes:
MM> Barry has made the choice to call the project he maintains
MM> "Mailman, the GNU Mailing List Manager"
MM> That's his right, it's his software
Just a minor correction, because I agree with Marc that in general, this kind of discussion is off-topic for this list.
John Viega invented Mailman back in oh, 1997 or so (my earliest email on the subject is circa mid-97). At the time it wasn't even called Mailman -- I don't think John had a name for it. Because it was written in Python and because we were so frustrated with Majordomo, we adopted it for the sigs on python.org. John originally had a very simple and very liberal license.
As the s/w developed, there was some discussion about what to call it, and how to license it. I believed at the time that the GPL was the best license to choose, and that we could increase its visibility, publicity, and popularity by positioning it within the GNU project. The GPL isn't right for everything (e.g. I think it would be fatally wrong for Python itself to ever be GPL'd), but it's perfect for Mailman. Ultimately, it was John's decision, but I did lobby for that outcome, and I think I was right about how the GNU project would help Mailman get to where it is today. For that reason, I have no problem calling it "GNU Mailman" where pressed to be precise.
sleepi-ly, -Barry
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/d732d15d8debc34c8b5f3fdc8db02d62.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Interesting discussion. I don't think anyone pointed out to the original questioner that mailman seems to work on any number of Unix-ish platforms (since he asked for a non-Linux OS): I'm playing with it in another window on OpenBSD on Sparc at the moment.
I don't want to get into an elaborate discussion of the credit given vs. credit asked for vs. credit taken mess, except to make a couple of general comments:
Sometimes folks who should get the credit don't -- because they never asked for it and nobody really knew to give it to them.
Sometimes folks get credit for something despite their best honest efforts to disclaim it.
Sometimes it's unclear, even to the people doing the work, who should get credit for it. This gets really complicated as we build on each others' work, whether in terms of code, protocols, interfaces, or ideas.
Thankfully, most people really do make an effort to try to claim the appropriate amount of credit and disclaim any more.
---Rsk
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/394ff8a394a1152399081d0ce6abdb5f.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Sandra Maynard wrote:
I think Mailman runs on nearly every modern Unix like system. I'm running it on Sun Solaris and I know that it runs also on Free- and OpenBSD.
It might even work on MacOS X. That could be the thing you are looking for... (forget Windows ;)
Cheers, Juri
-- If each of us have one object, and we exchange them, then each of us still has one object. If each of us have one idea, and we exchange them, then each of us now has two ideas.
participants (7)
-
barry@zope.com
-
Juri Haberland
-
Marc MERLIN
-
Norbert Bollow
-
Norbert Bollow
-
Rich Kulawiec
-
Sandra Maynard