[Mailman-Developers] before next release: disable backscatter indefault installation

[Jo Rhett]

Joshua 'jag' Ginsberg wrote:
> For what it's worth, you've stated your problem with impeccable clarity.
> What you haven't done with the same aplomb is acknowledge and respond to
> the equally legitimate concerns of the developer community here.

I have tried to.  I've even wasted time responding to people who don't 
seem to understand the issues involved at all.

> - - "I am asking that the developers start paying attention *NOW*."
> - -- Reply: "Nobody has said they should ignore the problem, just that
> *you* are *way* too late in the process to expect them to stop the
> release of 2.1.10 for this major change in behavior."

Invalid in that this issue has been known since long before 2.1.10 or 
honestly even 2.1.6 was thought of.  It's the same excuse with every 
release.

> - - "This is not substantive, it's trivial."
> - -- Reply: "From the point of view of the release manager, there are no
> trivial code changes to a release candidate."
> - -- Reply: "A text change breaks 35 existing Mailman translations, and

This I did acknowledge.  Check the mail archive.

> And you're intermixing it with impatience and superciliousness:

If you look, I only responded in that manner to people who insulted or 
attacked me first.  *And* in most cases I responded thoughtfully and dry 
to apparent insults to first, second... sometimes third time.  But I'm 
human.

A better question is why are people with zero apparent experience on 
this matter responding to me with insults and attacks?  My posts were 
entirely technical, and their inexperierence is apparent.  Their 
inability to work on the code base themselves is also apparent.  All 
this does is make me regret attempting to intervene in this matter in 
the first place.

> Like it or not, Mailman is a major development project with limited
> volunteer resources. It has strategically determined its own course --
> security fixes and translation updates only for 2.1; new features
> without major redesign for 2.2; major redesign for 3.0 -- and it has a
> standard professional release cycle.
> ... And you need to respect that to keep a stable, reliable product with
 > the limited volunteer resources it has, Mailman must follow these
> development guidelines.

No I don't.  My job is to enforce our AUP.  My job is not to come onto 
mailing lists with perfectly valid issues that are so very well known 
they are reported in the non-technical news media, and get abused for 
bringing them up.

> A compromise for 2.1 has been proposed -- a README.backscatter file,
> better wiki documentation, and getting the information out so that under
> the 2.1 framework backscatter can be minimized through sysadmin
> awareness. I encourage you to take the lead in this effort since the
> issue is clearly important to you.

No, this issue isn't "important to me".  Doing my job is important to 
me.  Preventing the next backscatter DoS against our mailservers (which 
was 60% mailman traffic) is important to me.

Since everyone already thinks that I'm a jerk, let's go all the way. 
Shutting down Mailman permanently, throughout the 'Net, *SHOULD* be 
important to me.  It's the best possible fix for the problem at hand. 
Why I chose to try and work with the developers to get a fix into place 
is a curious thing, because it certainly won't solve the problem today 
and it's clearly been a waste of time.

> Mailman is a community project, and you'll find a receptive and helpful
> audience for your issue when you give the community's concerns the
> consideration they deserve.

I think you need to go back and look at my original posts, and the abuse 
and derision and insults I received.  The problem is not that I failed 
to give the community's concerns respect.  You'll find, if you look 
honestly, that the problem went entirely the other way.  There wasn't a 
single response within a week of my original post that had anything 
verging on respect for the very well known issue in it.

Anyway, I'm done.

-- 
Jo Rhett
Net Consonance ... net philanthropy, open source and other randomness