[Mailman-Developers] Incoming Queue format

[Jim]

On Fri, 29 Sep 2006, Brad Knowles wrote:

> If you don't read the comments that Mark Crispin has written about 
> the weaknesses in Maildir, and you haven't read the code to see what 
> it's actually doing, then I don't see how you can participate in this 
> discussion.

I did read through both of the references you provided, more out of 
curiosity than any particular interest in whether or not Maildir is 
used to address the issues under discussion. To be honest, I don't see 
how either reference is particularly relevant. The Christenson paper is 
a nine year old architecture document that doesn't appear to make any 
mention of Maildir. At best it seems to imply that there are perhaps 
some better ways to solve some of the problems Maildir was designed to 
address. Crispin's comments appear to specifically address Maildir 
inefficiencies associated with management by an IMAP server. These 
inefficiencies are mostly (entirely?) unrelated to the delivery and 
one-time read scenario that is under discussion for Mailman (assuming I 
correctly understand the proposed feature). And to be fair, even the 
nature and severity of these Maildir inefficiencies is open to debate. 
See for example http://www.courier-mta.org/mbox-vs-maildir/#theend.

And since when is reading all source code for all programs, system
calls, etc. associated with a Mailman function a requirement for making
a comment or expressing an opinion on this list? If by chance you feel
that you have such insight into the source code, share it (as you have)
and leave it at that. Don't try to exclude people out of hand and scare
off others who might have useful input. Among other things a list is a
place for learning and gaining a deeper understanding of the issues
associated with the topic.

Jim