[Mailman-Developers] Requirements for a new archiver

[J C Lawrence]

On Wed, 29 Oct 2003 23:50:22 -0500 
Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org> wrote:
> On Wed, 2003-10-29 at 23:26, Brad Knowles wrote:

>> There, I have to disagree.  Both the web server and the mail server
>> issues are complex enough that I don't believe it would be a good
>> idea to try and re-invent this wheel.  There are already enough bad
>> web server and mail server implementations out there -- we don't need
>> to make this situation worse.

> Let's not discount the integration problems, which are a huge headache
> for newbies.  

I thought the prevalence of canned Mailman packages was doing a lot
there?  I haven't watched the -users list in a while.

> I'm fairly certain that Twisted is the right approach for surfacing
> the web u/i to Mailman.  The requirements are not overwhelming and
> fronting Mailman's u/i with Apache really doesn't buy us that much. 

Hang-on.  Apache isn't the target.  Mailman's UI is a CGI app.  As such
it works with any web server that supports CGI-bin, which pretty much
means any web server with no exceptions.  That's a pretty large gain,
especially in the novice admin or simple deployment case territory.

Doing our own thing for HTTP handling can quickly be another Pandora's
box, security concern, and integration problem for the (majority of)
people who do want to run Apache/Boa/Thttpd/Zeus/etc.

> We all agree that CGI sucks, and we could make that better with
> mod_python or some other such glue, but why go to the trouble?

CGI sucks yes, but it is the guaranteed common denominator, and CD
counts for more than feature whiz-bang at this level.

> Relying on Twisted for the incoming mail protocols is something I'm
> less certain about, although there is a lot of appeal to this
> approach.  

-1

Tarbaby, pandora's box, security nightmare, unbounded security envelope.

> We could throw lots smarts into a Python port-25 listener, including
> global spam fighting and bounce processing.  

You ___really___ don't want to get into your own SMTP-level bounce
processing.  Really.  That's one huge endlessly sucking time sinker.
Let Phillip Hazel, Wietse and the rest spend their time there.  

> An approach like Exim + elspy affords some really cool possibilities.

Absolutely, but that is outside of Mailman's territory.

More interesting would be things like TMDA integration, or implementing
support for Yakov Shafranovich extension of my consent token protocol:

  http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-irtf-asrg-cri-00.txt

Getting early buy-in as a sample implementation for an MLM wouldn't be a
Bad Thing.  There's a lot of really neat and useful integration and
feature set territory to explore before you start staring down the MTA's
throat.

-- 
J C Lawrence                
---------(*)                Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas. 
claw at kanga.nu               He lived as a devil, eh?		  
http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/  Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.