[Mailman-Developers] Opening up a few can o' worms here...

[Barry A. Warsaw]

>>>>> "CVR" == Chuq Von Rospach <chuqui@plaidworks.com> writes:

    CVR> Agreed, for now. But SA is, frankly, a cold war situation of
    CVR> constant escalation.

Yep.
    
    CVR> As you noted, Barry, some of you are forwarding through
    CVR> python.org to avoid having to install it, and spam assassin
    CVR> requires monitoring and upgrading.

Indeed, although DeerSoft will probably make it mostly dead simple, at
least for Windows users:

http://www.deersoft.com/
    
    CVR> TMDA is sort of a fireaxe instead of a scalpel, but it won't
    CVR> require fairly frequent tweaking to keep ahead of the
    CVR> spammers, either.

True, that's a real problem.  Note I already fight that battle with
bounce messages, and they are /supposed/ to be playing by the
rules. ;)

    CVR> I think SA for user accounts and TMDA for public accounts is
    CVR> the proper setup if you can do it, but can you build Mailman
    CVR> to have a requirement for Spam Assassin to be installed? Or
    CVR> should this be something that Mailman takes responsibility
    CVR> for? That's really the question here.

It's a good question.  There are patches on SF to integrate SA and
Mailman which I haven't had time to look at, but no, I don't think SA
should be a requirement.  I /do/ think they ought to play very nicely
together.

    >> I'd really like to believe that a PKI based approach will work
    >> some day but I just seriously doubt it.  It doesn't pass the
    >> "my mom can use it" test and I don't think it ever will.

    CVR> Oh, um...

    CVR> <http://www.chuqui.com/cgi-bin/mwf/topic_show.pl?tid=364>

Right on target.  But of course it doesn't matter anyway because
public key systems are hard enough for hardened geeks to use
regularly, so there's no hope in hell my mom's ever going to use it

(Aside: have y'all even tried to explain the basics of encryption,
signatures, etc. to your mom or dad?  I have.  They're smart people,
but not particularly computer literate.  They're even fairly
liberal/libertarian.  It's hard to get past why they'd even /want/ to
use it.  Oh well, when we die off and our kids' kids are running the
world, maybe it has a chance. ;)

-Barry