[Mailman-Developers] Systers Custom Mailman Extensions and GSoC projects

[Jennifer Redman]

Hello!

So I posted many months ago about Systers (http://systers.org) and our
implementation of dynamic sublists for Mailman.  We finally managed to get
everything into source control:  http://launchpad.net/systers and ported to
Mailman 2.1.10.   (I apologize for our Launchpad organization -- it's on my
list to straighten things out a bit including a new patch set and a better
versioning scheme.)

To implement the dlist options, we needed to add on a separate database --
we are currently using Postgresql, unfortunately at this time the code
contains raw sql calls.

The good news is that Systers was accepted into the GSoC and one of our
projects is building out the ORM layer for the dlist functionality.  We
received an overwhelming number of applications and are just now reaching
the final stages of ranking students and proposals.

You can see our idea's page here:

http://systers.org/systers-soc

One of our requirements for the ORM project is compatibility with MM3 (we
originally recommended using SQL Alchemy, but are now asking for STORM since
it appears that is what MM3 is using.)

With that in mind, and since our projects all have a Mailman focus are there
any active developers who would be willing to join our dev list and/or
potentially act as "armchair-mentors" --  just being available to answer any
specific questions about Mailman and perhaps help introduce our students to
the Mailman development community in a kind and gentle manner?  If so would
you please email me off-list (jenred at gmail.com) and tell me a little bit
about your background -- (if you are interested in being an informal
mentor)?

Features that are included in our MM customizations:

1) Dynamic sublists (the ability to unsubscribe from individual discussion
threads)
2) Alternate email address - users can enter in multiple email addresses (as
opposed to being done at the admin level)
3) Essay requirement for mailing list application and approval

At this point our documentation is part of a larger set of complete system
installation, we will make better installation directions available over the
next week or so if anyone is interested in using some of the above features
(in tandem with the Launchpad re-org, and patch making).

Features hopefully coming soon:

1) Using an ORM for Database Abstraction (for dlist functionality)
2) Storing application essays for future review
3) Using the MM user data for 3rd party application authentication
(potentially OpenID and OpenLDAP)

One of our priorities is to make sure we are doing things in ways that are
compatible with MM3 and MM upstream in general, so any suggestions are
welcome.

Thanks,
Jen