[Mailman-Developers] Debate about Mailman on BytesForAll

[Kevin McCann]

Frederick Noronha (FN) wrote:

> Hello from India:
>
> I am a Free Software enthusiast and co-founder of BytesForAll.org
>
> Recently, there was an interesting debate taking place on our 
> discussion list, about Mailman 2.0 and future plans. Many are users of 
> Mailman, and I would request those developers with the inclination to 
> kindly check on the same at
>
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bytesforall_readers


Of course, from my point of view, the discussion is really about Mailman 
3.0 and future plans.  ;-)  

To give context (seeing how I originally posted to bytes4all, not to 
mailman-developers), we (Bellanet and other orgs) are working on a 
project which is essentially an Open Sourcification of a service we run 
called Dgroups (www.dgroups.org). Dgroups is similar in many ways to 
YahooGroups, but without the noisy ads. Unfortunately, it is based on 
proprietary components - Lyris/MS SQL/ColdFusion.

Many of you on this list might recall discussions we had last year about 
the SQL-ability of Mailman. Many of you know that I have been lobbying 
for this for a very, very long time. I was quite happy when Barry 
started warming up to this in late 2003, early 2004. And we really made 
some headway at the developers sprint in March, as it became clear that 
Maki, Dale, myself and Barry were all very keen on a Mailman 3 that 
would support SQL data storage. Making Mailman 3 much more modular was 
certainly one of the other many goals.

The debate happening on bytes4all seems to be whether or not pushing for 
a SQL-able Mailman (ala Mailman 3) is the way to go or whether it is 
better to try to hack something together with Mailman 2 now, despite its 
problems:  pickle file storage, Pipermail archives, one-to-one 
list/member relationship, etc. I say "nay" to Mailman 2 and instead 
support the advancement of Mailman 3. Our organization, along with 
another funder, has earmarked significant funds for the Mailman 3 effort 
and look forward to sicing a few developers on Barry! 

So, there's a bit of context for those of you who are interested in the 
"debate."

Best,
Kevin