[Mailman-Developers] Mailman Dynamic Sublists

[Barry Warsaw]

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On Feb 28, 2008, at 4:40 PM, Jennifer Redman wrote:

> Hello!

I Jennifer,

> The Systers (http://anitaborg.org/initiatives/systers/) community  
> uses a
> modified version of Mailman that extends functionality to include  
> dynamic
> sublists (a person can chose to unsubscribe to individual  
> conversations if
> they are not interested, without removing themselves from the main  
> list).

Very cool.  I remember talking with Ellen about this years ago.

> The extension has been running well for the last 4+ years, but it's  
> time to
> sync to the current version of Mailman to remedy some problems with  
> the
> upgrade path, security concerns, and bugs that have appeared due to  
> bit rot.
>
> The original project is located here:
>
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/dsub/
>
> Ellen Spertus, the author of the extensions, posted previously many  
> years
> ago -- around 2002 if you'd like to search for the original threads.
>
> My questions for the Mailman Development Community:
>
> 1) Is there any interest in helping us bring the code up to date?

Without looking at the code, I think this should be done as part of  
Mailman 2.2's development.  But you could start by merging the code  
with the head of the Mailman 2.1 branch.  Once it applies cleanly to  
2.1 it should be pretty easy to apply to 2.2 once the latter is  
brought current.

It can't go into 2.1 because it's a new feature.  I'm really hoping  
that 2.1.10 will be one of the last 2.1 releases and that we'll start  
focussing on 2.2 and 3.0 from then on.

It would be neat to see how the same ideas could be applied to 3.0,  
but I suspect the implementation would be fairly significantly  
different.

> 2) Is the correct first step to create an unofficial branch and move  
> the
> project into Launchpad under the auspices of the Mailman project?

You don't need official Mailman project blessing to do the first  
steps.  I think it would be enough to create a team and project on  
Launchpad, bzr branch the Mailman 2.1 tree, port your code to the  
branch, then push the branch into the team's code area.  Mailman's  
code pillar should notice that the branches are related and show up  
automatically under its Code tab.

Be sure to edit this page though: http://wiki.list.org/display/DEV/MailmanBranches

I'm happy to chat with you on irc (#mailman on freenode) if you have  
any questions getting this set up!

> 3) Has anyone developed something similar in the past few years which
> provides similar functionality that may be an acceptable alternative?

I think Tokio's sibling lists might be in the same ballpark.

> 4) What steps would we need to take to get the extensions included  
> upstream?

First let's get a working branch on Launchpad, then we can review the  
code.  Ultimately, we'll need FSF assignment papers for any  
significant patch (which it sounds like this is) from all copyright  
owners.  Other than that, if it's a cool feature then I think 100k  
euros (sorry, US dollar <snif>) to each of Mark, Tokio and I in bags  
of small, unmarked coins should do it. :)

just-kidding-about-the-bribe-ly y'rs,
- -Barry

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