[Mailman-Developers] Patch for Mail Archive mirroring

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

>>>>> "BAW" == Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org> writes:

    BAW> On Thu, 2005-05-12 at 19:48, Chuq Von Rospach wrote:

    >> Does archiving need to be integrated into mailman in the first
    >> place? As opposed to, say, a place to specifiy the URL of the
    >> archives for display?

    BAW> The key is that you have to know what value to insert into
    BAW> List-Archive.

But you need that anyway---unless you use pipermail, Mailman can't
know where your archives are until you tell it.  So that doesn't argue
against changing pipermail's interface to generic archive-by-mail,
Mailman can still know where pipermail will put stuff.

I see two problems with archive-by-mail, aside from "don't fix
pipermail, which ain't broke".  The first is that you have to be
careful to set up that archive mail address to be secure, otherwise
it's a back door for spam to get into your archive.  This is going to
be, uh, subtle for most of the users <coff>at least, I got bit</coff>.
Even if we try to document it carefully I think this is FAQ-a-minute.

The second was suggested by the "who owns X-No-Archive, anyway?" 
issue.  If archiving is done by a special handler, it can have special
logic to (attempt to) inhibit 3rd party archivers, it can respect
X-No-Archive itself, and you can move it around in the pipeline if you
need special effects.  All of that is hard to do if it's hiding among
the general memebership.

NB, if the Archive handler supports the mail-to-archive protocol,
then you don't have to worry about having an International Archiver
Protocol with a World Archiver Organization to embargo archives who
forget to obey X-No-Archive ... Mailman handles that.


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