[Mailman-Developers] Patch for Mail Archive mirroring

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

>>>>> "Brad" == Brad Knowles <brad at stop.mail-abuse.org> writes:

    Brad> 	Lars was nice enough to comply with our request to
    Brad> remove our lists from gmane, but these kinds of operations
    Brad> should not be done without a positive and explicit approval
    Brad> from the listmaster.

Any subscriber might be keeping and publishing an archive of the list
posts.  If the listmaster doesn't like that, he should be vetting each
subscription, and making sure that each subscriber understands the
rules.  [Otherwise ... under copyright law, the listmaster has no
interest in the posts.  That implies that if the posters get upset
about this, the listmaster is liable, as well as (and maybe more so)
the 3rd party archiver.]  I don't see why Gmane or the Mail Archive
should have to obey special rules here.

I think there are two issues here.  The first is privacy.  That is
served simply by defaulting this feature off, and documenting whatever
the policy of The Mail Archive is in the configuration process, and
advising caution on the part of list admins, as they might be legally
liable for 3rd party misbehavior.  This actually answers most of your
worries, Brad; ie, if Gmane gatewaying were part of the Mailman
configuration process rather than at Gmane's option, your ntp lists
would never have been gatewayed and archived, right?

And the default and the docs are under mailman-developers control.
I'm sure that if Jeff & Jeff didn't like the blurb because it was too
accurate :-), Barry would be happy to remove the patch, but surely he
wouldn't cover up potential problems in the doc or turn it on by
default.

The second is that this patch evidently constitutes a significant
endorsement of The Mail Archive.  As I understand Jeff's post, he went
to the trouble of asking Lars if he would like a similar setup added
for Gmane, patch to be coded by Jeff || Jeff.  I have to admit that
somebody who would go to that much trouble to implement the same
feature for a close substitute sounds pretty endorsable to me!

... if Mailman is going to endorse services that way.  I don't really
think it's a good idea in principle, though.  What happens if The Mail
Archive goes away or goes proprietary?  What are people going to think
if The Mail Archive's maintainers hire Barry or Brad?  Etc, etc.

On the pro side, there is the point that this would make such
mirroring an opt-in on the listmaster's side, which is good.  So it
might be worth Mailman thinking about under what conditions it would
be good to make such an endorsement, and adding anybody who satisfied
those conditions.

-- 
School of Systems and Information Engineering http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba                    Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
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              ask what your business can "do for" free software.