making Mailman CAN-SPAM compliant (was Re:[Mailman-Developers] Hashing member passwords in config.pck)

[Adrian Bye]

> 	All I can say is that Mailman is a non-profit open 
> source project, run by a group of people in whatever spare 
> time they can manage to scrape together.
> 
> 	The Linux folks haven't cracked the ease-of-use aspects 
> of their OS compared to Microsoft, not even for the companies 
> that are spending large quantities of money to try to make 
> that happen.  We're a much, much smaller group, and although 
> this is also a smaller target, I don't see us being likely to 
> succeed in this area where the Linux folks have not.
> 
> 	If someone wanted to pay large sums of money to make an 
> open source Yahoo! Groups-beating package, and pay people to 
> work on that as their full-time job, we might be able to 
> change this situation -- in time.

Brad,

We've previously had conversations about some Yahoo groups functionality which
you said wasn't possible:

http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=show&file=faq04.039.htp

Yesterday I contributed patches which enables Mailman to have this exact
functionality which we borrowed from Yahoo Groups.  Yet I've seen no response
from you yet, and only one half dismissive response from another mailman
developer.

Mailman CAN be as good - and better - than Yahoo Groups.  It doesn't have to
take lots of money and resources.  Just being willing to accept our code a piece
at a time, and encouraging those who contribute will go a long way towards
getting there.

There may be some disagreement on the unsubscribe styff, but the header/footer
handling only benefits everyone.  I certainly hope that the mailman team will be
responsive, and accept these patches and integrate them into the codebase.  From
my side we'll do whatever it takes to make that happen.  Just tell us what we
have to do.

Adrian