[Mailman-Developers] GNU Mailman Architectural Patterns & Quality Attributes for Research

[Michael Skeen]

Hello GNU Mailman Community,


I am part of an undergraduate research group focusing on software
architecture patterns and quality attributes at Utah Valley University. We
recently analyzed the work published on GNU Mailman in the Architecture of
Open Source Applications <http://aosabook.org/en/index.html> (AOSA) and
referenced it in a paper we presented at the 13th Working IEEE/IFIP
Conference on Software Architecture (WICSA), as attached.  As a part of our
continuing research we wish to validate our architectural analysis for GNU
Mailman with the current developers.


We would like to know if we are missing any patterns or quality attributes
that may have been included in GNU Mailman, or if there are any we listed
that aren’t used. Any additional comment on these topics you might have
would also, of course, be welcome.


We believe we found the following software architectural patterns in this
application:


* Pattern Name | Is This Found in the Architecture? (yes / no / don't know)
| Comments (optional)*

Client Server Layers Master and Commander Pipes and Filters Shared
Repository Simple Repository

Other?


We also identified the following quality attributes:


* Attribute Name | Is This Found in the Architecture? | Comments (optional)*

Scalability Extensibility Performance Portability Reliability

Other?


For your convenience, we have a complete list below of the patterns and
quality attributes we referred to when conducting our research. To clarify,
we are specifically studying architectural patterns, rather than design
patterns such as the GoF patterns.


Architectural Patterns Considered

Quality Attributes Considered

Active Repository

Scalability

Batch

Usability

Blackboard

Extensibility

Broker

Performance

Client Server

Portability

Event System

Flexibility

Explicit Invocation

Reliability

Implicit Invocation

Maintainability

Indirection Layer

Security

Interceptor

Testability

Interpreter

Capacity

Layers

Cost

Master and Commander

Legality

Microkernel

Modularity

Model View Controller

Robustness

Peer to Peer


Pipes and Filters


Plugin


Presentation Abstraction Control


Publish Subscribe


Reflection


Rule-Based System


Shared Repository


Simple Repository


State Based


Virtual Machine



Please respond by October 25th, if possible.

Thank you for considering our request, and for your continued work on GNU
Mailman.


Sincerely,


Michael Skeen, with

Erich Gubler,

Danielle Skinner,

Brandon Leishman,

Neil Harrison, Ph.D. (advisor)


Reference: Neil B. Harrison, Erich Gubler, Danielle Skinner, "Software
Architecture Pattern Morphology in Open-Source Systems",WICSA, 2016, 2016
13th Working IEEE/IFIP Conference on Software Architecture (WICSA), 2016
13th Working IEEE/IFIP Conference on Software Architecture (WICSA) 2016,
pp. 91-98, doi:10.1109/WICSA.2016.8
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