[Mailman-Developers] Patch for Mail Archive mirroring

[Brad Knowles]

At 3:09 PM -0700 2005-04-29, Jeff Marshall wrote:

>  Feedback?

	Speaking as the listmaster for ntp.isc.org (and ntp.org, back 
before all those lists got moved), I can say that I would not be 
opposed to this patch, if you would be willing to guarantee that you 
would not archive or mirror any mailing lists except through this 
sort of mechanism, and that adequate protections were built into the 
system.


	I ran into a problem where gmane was archiving some of our 
mailing lists (going back quite some time), and we didn't discover 
this fact until much, much later.  Lars was nice enough to comply 
with our request to remove our lists from gmane, but these kinds of 
operations should not be done without a positive and explicit 
approval from the listmaster.  So far as I know, gmane had never done 
that for our lists.

	They also had a minor problem where a couple of days after we 
requested that he remove all of our lists from his system, a new 
request from gmane came in to mirror/archive one of our other lists, 
which we obviously rejected.  We also complained about this to Lars, 
and he apologized for not having recorded our preference to avoid 
mirroring/archiving any of our lists across the whole system.


	I know that mail-archive.com provides mirroring/archiving 
services for mailman-users and mailman-developers, and apparently 
you've had that arrangement through Barry for quite some time.  So 
long as that was an explicit arrangement you had with the listmaster, 
I don't mind that continuing to remain.

	However, I do generally prefer to let mailing list servers 
provide their own archives and search functions.  If the request came 
in today from mail-archive.com to do this function for mailman-users 
or mailman-developers, I would be opposed to it -- not strongly 
opposed, and I'd probably be out-voted by the other people who would 
have a say in this decision, but I would still be opposed.

	Nevertheless, I recognize that some people may place a higher 
value on having an external site provide mirroring/archiving 
services, and I don't mind making it easier for Mailman 
administrators to make use of such functions.  However, I would want 
to make sure that these features are difficult to abuse or misuse, 
and I would want to make sure that all existing subscriptions get 
converted over to this kind of service as it becomes available, so 
that the additional protective measures are applied as broadly as 
possible.


	Is that waffley enough for you?  ;)

-- 
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.