[Mailman-Developers] sender-based authorisation

[David Lee]

On Fri, 19 May 2006, Mark Sapiro wrote:

> [...]
> We definitely want to move towards a single 'user identity/account' per
> person per site with a single authorization and multiple email
> addresses and subscriptions. Quoting from the todo list
> <http://www.list.org/todo.html>
>
> # Have one account per user per site, with multiple email addresses and
>   fallbacks. Allow them to subscribe whichever address they want to
>   whichever list, with different options per subscription.

Thanks for your reply.  Much appreciated!

(Remember that I'm new to Mailman.)

I had seen that item in the "todo".  That had felt as if it was oriented
towards list members/recipients having a consistent subscription password
across all the lists to which they belong (i.e. Mailman's output side)
rather than towards posters/senders (Mailman's input side).  I could see
that in merging these two concepts, while there would be benefits, there
might also be drawbacks.  (Not sure what those drawbacks would be, but I
didn't want to rush into merging two concepts (recipient control; sender
control) which might have vital, if subtle, differences.)


> Given that infrastructure, it seems simple to implement the authorized
> poster concept.

This suggests expanding the scope of the recipient-oriented "todo" item to
cover potential senders.


> In the mean time, I think you could accomplish much of what you want
> with a custom handler. It would need to have access to a user file
> which defined the user's capabilities and posting password, [...]

This would seem to require almost the same data structure and support
mechanisms that the "todo" item would require.  (Or have I misunderstood?)
It feels like a duplication of effort.

Wouldn't it be better for any "authorised sender" work that we (our site)
might do to be a stepping stone towards achieving that "todo"?  (The
"todo" had recipients in mind whilst "authorised sender" has posters in
mind, but see above for commonality.)


> [...] but it
> would be simple for it to then use some feature of the message to
> validate the poster, remove the secret information and set the
> approved flag in the message metadata (not the Approved: header, but
> the flag that the Approved header causes to be set.)
>
> See Mailman/Handlers/Approve.py for an example of doing approval and
> see
> <http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=show&file=faq04.067.htp>
> for more on custom handlers.

... which (if I understand correctly) would be an application-like thing
making use of the services provided by the results of a "todo"-like thing.

Summary:  The "todo" identifies a use for recipient-oriented accounts.
Our "authorised sender" proposal identifies sender-oriented accounts.
There is surely scope for signficant (even if not total) overlap in the
underlying concepts, data, structures and code.

Should we (Mailman community, self included!) start addressing the "todo"
account mechanism?


-- 

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