[Mailman-Developers] [ANNOUNCE] Mailman 2.0 beta 1

[Barry A. Warsaw]

I've just uploaded the Mailman 2.0 beta 1 tarball to www.list.org.  I
decided to name the new version "2.0" because of the architectural
changes that have been made.  See the excerpt from the NEWS file below
for details of what's changed since version 1.1.

Two important things to take note of.  You will need Python 1.5.2 to
run this version of Mailman.  Also, if you are upgrading from Mailman
1.x you will need to read the UPGRADING file for instructions.

I don't plan to make wider release announcements until 2.0 final is
ready to go, but I also don't expect the beta cycle to be very long.
We'll see!

Enjoy,
-Barry

-------------------- snip snip --------------------
- A new bundled auto-responder has been added.  You can now
  configure an autoresponse text for each list's primary
  addresses:

    listname@yourhost.com -- the general posting address
    listname-request@...  -- the automated "request bot" address
    listname-admin@...    -- the human administrator address

- The standard UI now includes three logos at the bottom of the
  page: Dragon's Mailman logo, the Python Powered logo, and the
  GNU logo.  All point to their respective home pages.

- It is now possible to set the Reply-To: field on lists to an
  arbitrary address.  NOTE: Reply-To: munging is generally
  considered harmful!  However for some read-only lists, it is
  useful to direct replies to a parallel discussion list.

- There is a new message delivery architecture which uses a
  pipeline processor for incoming and internally generated
  messages.  Mailman no longer contains a bundled bulk-mailer;
  instead message delivery is handled completely by the MTA.  Most
  MTAs give a high enough priority to connections from the
  localhost that mail will not be lost because of system load, but
  this is not guaranteed (or handled) by Mailman currently.  Be
  careful also if your smtpd is on a different host than the
  Mailman host.  In practice, mail lossage has not be observed.

  For this reason cron/run_queue is no longer needed (see the
  UPGRADING file for details).

  Also, you can choose whether you want direct smtp delivery, or
  delivery via the command line to a sendmail-compatible daemon.
  You can also easily add your own delivery module.  See
  Mailman/Defaults.py for details.

- A similar pipeline architecture for the parsing of bounce
  messages has been added.  Most common bounce formats are now
  handled, including Qmail, Postfix, and DSN.  It is now much
  easier to add new bounce detectors.

- The approval pending architecture has also been revamped.
  Subscription requests and message posts waiting for admin
  approval are no longer kept in the config.db file, but in a
  separate requests.db file instead.

- Finally made consistent the use of Sender:/From:/From_ in the
  matching of headers for such things as member-post-only.  Now,
  if USE_ENVELOPE_SENDER is true, Sender: will always be chosen
  over From:, however the default has been changed to
  USE_ENVELOPE_SENDER false so that From: is always chosen over
  Sender:.  In both cases, if no header is found, From_ (i.e. the
  envelope sender is used).  Note that the variable is now
  misnamed!  Most people want From: matching anyway and any are
  easily spoofable.

- New scripts bin/move_list, bin/config_list

- cron/upvolumes_yearly, cron/upvolumes_monthly, cron/archive,
  cron/run_queue all removed.  Edit your crontab if you used these
  scripts.  Other scripts removed: contact_transport, deliver,
  dumb_deliver.

- Several web UI improvements, especially in the admin page.

- Remove X-pmrqc: headers to prevent return reciepts for Pegasus
  mail users.

- Security patch when using external archivers.

- Honor "X-Archive: No" header by not putting this message in the
  archive.

- Changes to the log file format.

- The usual bug fixes.