[Mailman-Developers] PHP Wrappers?

[Brad Knowles]

At 11:49 PM -0500 2005-11-16, Kevin McCann wrote:

>                                                                  I'm not
>  going to try to make you "get it" but I will say that the right tool for
>  "the job" just doesn't exist yet. It would be nice if it did.

	Mailman is not, and never will be, the be-all and end-all of 
community collaboration tools.  By necessity, those tools must be 
all-encompassing, and mailing list management is just a small part of 
the much greater picture.  You can't just take a bunch of independent 
tools and throw them into a blender and hope that something useful 
comes out the other end.

	If you want the be-all and end-all of community collaboration 
tools, you're not just barking up the wrong tree, you're in the wrong 
bloody forest on the wrong damn planet in the wrong friggin' solar 
system in the wrong galaxy in the wrong Universe.

	Mailman will move towards greater integration with database 
tools, yes.  But it is not now, nor will it ever be, the be-all and 
end-all of community collaboration tools.


	Moreover, if it was going to be such a thing, it would be highly 
commercially saleable, and you wouldn't be getting it for free.  You 
wouldn't be getting it for anything remotely approaching free.

	The ultimate community collaboration tool or free.  Pick one.

>  I'm not throwing stones, Brad. I've tried to make that clear.

	I'm sorry, despite all your claims to the contrary, whether or 
not you say you are throwing stones does not necessarily have any 
bearing on whether or not you actually are throwing stones.

>  Took a while to convince some on list config and member data. Still work
>  to do on message archives.

	I don't think there's any problem at all convincing anyone that 
message archives would be very useful to have indexed in a database. 
The issue is how to change the code so as to make that happen.

	You might as well just cross this one off your list now, because 
otherwise you're just going to make yourself look even more foolish.

>  No, Brad. That is not why. The reason is that people have other
>  commitments and the project is not as open as it could be so that those
>  who do have more time or MONEY could help move things along.

	It's an open source project.  If you don't like the way it's 
being run, you can always take a copy of the code and go play in your 
own GPL sandbox.

	But this project is as open as any other I've seen, and 
considerably more open than most.  Do you have any idea what kind of 
work it takes to get a mod bit in FreeBSD that allows you to directly 
make any changes you want to the code and without having to have them 
approved by a mentor?  And even then, you're only allowed to make 
changes within your small part of the kingdom?

	Yes, there are a relatively large number of people who have 
achieved that goal, but they are a much, much, much bigger project 
and much better financed, and they've been around a lot longer.


	Give us a thousand or a million times as many good programmers, 
millions of dollars, and a decade to put it all together, and we 
might be able to do something that could potentially begin to achieve 
some progress towards the ultimate collaboration tool.

>  I'm not at all surprised it sounds like criticism to you. You just don't
>  get it and I doubt you ever will..

	When you're being abused and the person doing the abuse tells you 
that you're not being abused, who and what are you going to believe?

	The facts are the facts.  Your claims regarding the facts do not 
necessarily have any bearing whatsoever on the facts themselves.

>  I have been watching this project closer than I'd like to admit for 5
>  years. You're happy with the status quo, I'd prefer to try to get things
>  happening.

	Once again, you have mis-characterized the situation to fit your 
own agenda.

	It's not that I'm "happy with the status quo", it's that I'm a 
realist and I understand that short of being able to take people like 
Barry and Tokio and pay them money to do little but work on Mailman 
full-time, we can't expect to see a Universe of change overnight.

	This is going to take some time.  More time than I would like, 
much more time than Barry would like, and obviously a lot more time 
than you would like.


	The question is what are you going to do to try to help that 
situation, or are you going to continue to just bluster and make 
noise?


	Actions speak louder than words.  So, let's see some action.

	If you can't come up with the money to pay for Barry to work on 
Mailman3 full-time, then come up with code to fix all the problems 
you've outlined.  If you can't come up with code, then come up with 
something else to help break your perceived logjam.

>              That's where we differ. No need to be snide and arrogant.

	Then stop doing one thing and claiming something else.

	If you want to criticize, then please at least attempt to be 
constructive in your criticism.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad at stop.mail-abuse.org>

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

     -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
     Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755

   SAGE member since 1995.  See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.