[Mailman-Developers] Fwd: Feedback for mailman developers

Fri Feb 8 00:11:59 CET 2008

Begin forwarded message:

> From: "Adrian Bye" <adrian at tasmaniaconsulting.com>
> Date: February 7, 2008 5:53:21 PM EST
> To: barry at list.org
> Subject: Fwd: [Mailman-Developers] Feedback for mailman developers
>
> Barry,
>
> Could you do me a huge favor and make sure this gets to the list.   
> It doesn't show up in the archives.
>
> Warm regards,
>
> Adrian
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Adrian Bye <adrian at tasmaniaconsulting.com>
> Date: Feb 7, 2008 2:08 PM
> Subject: Re: [Mailman-Developers] Feedback for mailman developers
> To: Barry Warsaw <barry at list.org>
> Cc: mailman-developers at python.org, rms at gnu.org, bmurdoch at lwb.org.au, tmihalicek at mihainside.com 
> , techsupport at meridian-ds.com, Peter Brown <peterb at fsf.org>
>
>
> Hi guys,
>
> I've copied 3 people who emailed me since May 2007 about this  
> issue.  I don't know any of them, they just found my post from 3  
> years ago on the web and wrote to me.  Clearly its important to them  
> since they emailed me about it.
>
> Guys:  I encourage you to subscribe to the mailman-developers list  
> so you can communicate your needs directly with the mailman  
> development team.
>
> The one-click unsubscribe is a critical feature for mailman and will  
> open up a much larger interest base.  I am not proposing 1-click  
> unsubscribe for discussion mailing lists such as this one - that  
> would obviously cause problems with people unsubscribing each other  
> by mistake.  However a lot of organizations use mailing list  
> software to broadcast newsletters to their membership.  If users  
> cannot unsubscribe via some kind of (simple) 1-click interface then  
> it limits the people who can use the system and may not be CANSPAM  
> compliant.  The FSF is one organization that has been running a  
> newsletter for a while and they have had to manually handle  
> unsubscribe requests.  Peter Brown is copied as well as RMS and may  
> be able to respond if necessary.
>
> When many users cannot unsubscribe from an announcement list (as the  
> FSF used mailman for) they often don't bother, instead they just hit  
> the "this is spam" button.  Neither the sender or receiver notices  
> anything when this happens.  For the receiver, future emails from  
> the list go into the trash, so hitting the "this is spam" button  
> accomplished their purpose.  The sender doesn't realise there was a  
> problem because they never heard from the recipient.  But the mail  
> services know (eg hotmail/gmail/yahoo/aol) and they begin to mark  
> the IP address/domain of the sender as a spam sender.  This causes  
> future WANTED mail from that sender to go into the trash.
>
> When we were experimenting with mailman 3 years ago, we found that  
> in fact mailman already has a bad reputation for email.  We found  
> our mail was directly going into the trash when it included mailman  
> headers.  When we modified mailman to send but hide the mailman  
> headers, we got directly into the inbox.  This testing is 3 years  
> old, and I don't remember the specific services we were testing to,  
> but it included one of hotmail or yahoo.
>
> While mailman continues not to support easy unsubscribe in the  
> footers, it will continue to hamper the growth of free software, as  
> free software organizations will not have a reliable product to mail  
> to broadcast to interested users.  This demand is evidenced by the  
> emails I get every 2 months from people asking me for this patch due  
> to my emails in the archives from 3 years ago.
>
> I'm not here to get into a debate - I only joined the list again to  
> ask to have that post removed because I'm tired of responding to  
> these requests which I cannot help with.
>
> I hope this explains my point of view.  Best of luck,
>
> Adrian
>
>
> On 2/7/08, Barry Warsaw <barry at list.org> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> On Feb 5, 2008, at 4:07 PM, Adrian Bye wrote:
>
> > Hi guys (and RMS, copied),
> >
> > About 3 years ago I made this post:
> >
> > http://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman
> > -developers/2005-February/017850.html
> >
> > As a result, I get an email every 1-2 months from people asking  
> for an
> > updated patch.
>
> It looks to me like there are really two separate unrelated features
> here.  Distributing them in the same patch would make it difficult to
> review, discuss, test and integrate, regardless of whether they are
> good ideas or not.
>
> I would like to encourage you to develop your patches in a different
> way.  I'm not making any promises about whether they would be
> integrated if you do this, but it would make it easier for us to look
> at, and I believe easier for your to maintain separately if you decide
> to continue to do so.
>
> I would highly recommend creating two separate Bazaar branches of the
> Mailman 2.1 code.  Each would implement just one of your features.
> You could create a third branch with the whole thing if you wanted,
> but I don't think it would be necessary.  You should then register on
> Launchpad and push these branches, publishing them in a live source
> code repository for all to see.
>
> I'm really trying to encourage this style of development.  To me,
> patches living in a tracker is dead code.  With a published, public
> branch, the entire process is more transparent, we can easily do a
> merge and test if we wanted to look at it.  We can even find these
> branches easily via Launchpad.  And you will have an easier time
> maintaining them, because as new revisions get pushed to Mailman 2.1
> trunk, you can just merge, commit, and push to update your own branch.
>
> If you -- or anybody else -- has questions about this workflow, please
> ping me on #mailman on irc.freenode.net.  I will happily walk you
> through it.
>
> Cheers,
> - -Barry
>
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>
>
> -- 
> Adrian Bye
> Tasmania Consulting Group
> http://TasmaniaConsulting.com
> adrian.bye at tasmaniaconsulting.com
> Phone: 305-433-8188 Fax: 305-428-2665
>
> Mailing address:
> 8260 NW 14th St, EPS-Y12457
> Doral, FL, 33126-1502
>
>
> -- 
> Adrian Bye
> Tasmania Consulting Group
> http://TasmaniaConsulting.com
> adrian.bye at tasmaniaconsulting.com
> Phone: 305-433-8188 Fax: 305-428-2665
>
> Mailing address:
> 8260 NW 14th St, EPS-Y12457
> Doral, FL, 33126-1502

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