[Mailman-Developers] MM feature request - spread out the pain

Stephen J. Turnbull stephen at xemacs.org
Mon Apr 5 04:53:49 CEST 2010


David Andrews writes:

 > I disagree, not everyone who runs a list has access to the command 
 > line, and/or the means or ability to set up a Cron Job, so something 
 > through the Web UI would be useful!

Of course it would be useful to people who are using platforms that
were designed to make Mailman use painful.  Nevertheless, Mailman's
mission is "providing the best possible mailing list manager", not
"providing poor emulations of everything that Unix does that Windows
and cPanel do not".  Supporting these Misfeatured Platforms already
takes up a lot of time.  It's like sharpening the claw end of a hammer
head: the more such features we add, the more people will take up up
using hammers to drive screws.  It's still better to spend the $1 (or
$15, if you go Snap-On) for the screwdriver.

If Mailman can do it *better* than cron, that would be another
matter.  That point is arguable, but my personal preference would be
to provide a generic feature that both cron and other possible
schedulers could take advantage of.

Alternatively, if this feature can be provided easily as a side effect
of something Mailman already has to do, that would be good, too -- as
long as it's not a step onto the slippery slope of mission creep.



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