[Mailman-Developers] before next release: disable backscatterin default installation

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Kenneth Porter writes:

 > [Wikipedia says:]
 > > A vigilante is a person who ignores due process of law and enacts his own
 > > form of justice when they deem the response of the authorities to be
 > > insufficient.
 > 
 > I see nothing wrong with that. Where I live, self-defense is
 > acceptable.

If you equate self-defense with justice, you are wrong.  Vigilantes go
beyond self-defense, and that's where they go wrong.

 > > [...] blacklisting some poor Ubuntu user, who just installs Mailman and
 > > creates a few lists because it says on the homepage that it tries to
 > > conform to the RFCs on mailing lists and provides some antispam features,
 > > and expects that it will therefore DTRT. [...] may be necessary, there's
 > > no way it's right.
 > 
 > Is it wrong for me to choose to not accept his traffic?

Of course not.  Where has anybody suggested otherwise?

What I object to is the notion that blacklisting is "right".  That is
vigilante thinking.  Blacklisting is morally neither right nor wrong,
not even in the context of spam received.  It is a tool that can be
used and abused.

 > Does the hypothetical "poor Ubuntu user" have a right to set policy
 > on my server?

No, but he's going to do it anyway.  The policy you want (unless
you've got something personal against him) is to never see spam and
backscatter, and to receive the valid mails that pass through his
server.  You can't have that if you blacklist him.  You can't have
that if you don't.