[Mailman-Users] Newbie requesting basic how-to

[Brad Knowles]

At 1:09 AM -0500 2004-09-22, Jon Roland wrote:

>  I've figured that out, and I can certainly see why it makes sense when
>  the list administrator is not directly on the machine that hosts mailman,
>  but it seems like it would be useful to have an alternative of running a
>  python GUI that does the same thing without having to run the web server
>  when the use for it is so limited. Just a suggested item for the to-do list.

	I don't understand how you could possibly accomplish this.  Are 
you proposing that the Python developers create an entire new 
Graphical User Interface, to compete with X11R6/Gnome/KDE and the 
like, and then somehow serve this remotely via the Internet?!?

	There's a reason why standard tools like webservers are used for 
these kinds of things -- it's not excessively hard to implement a web 
interface component, you avoid re-inventing that wheel, and you avoid 
bloating your project by 100000000% as a result of incorporating all 
that duplicative code.


	Graphical user environments like X11 are some of the biggest 
projects (in terms of millions of lines of code) of any type of 
system on the Internet.  Somewhat smaller are major daemons to 
implement complex communications protocols with lots of plug-ins, 
sub-options, cryptographic security subsystems, and varieties of ways 
to configure them (such as apache).

	Many, many orders of magnitude smaller are things like Python and 
Mailman.  Heck, you could probably fit all of Python (including 
Mailman) into the space of a single plug-in for Apache.


	Does the flea try to re-invent the elephant, so that it will have 
a place to live?  Does the flea then try to incorporate the elephant 
into itself, so that it will always have a place to live?

	I think this concept has to qualify as one of the most 
unrealistic and implausible suggestions that I have heard in ... many 
years.  The mind boggles.



	I have never threatened to give a Douglas N. Adams "Infinite 
Improbability Award" to anyone, but I think if I did, you'd have to 
be top of that list.

	Well, at least within the field of Internet Technology -- I think 
it would be hard to beat some of the unbelievable things that some 
politicians have suggested, like trying to tie 9/11 to Saddam Hussein 
and using that lie as a pretext to war.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad at stop.mail-abuse.org>

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

     -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
     Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755

   SAGE member since 1995.  See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.