[Mailman-Users] Mailman as helpdesk tool

[Peter Hutnick]

I would like to point out while GAP is "source available" and 
therefore might be reasonably called "open source"  it is NOT "Open 
Source" (as defined at http://www.opensource.org/osd.html) and is most 
certainly not Free Software.

I write this not out of some sort of license zealotry, but this is, 
after all, the mailing list for the GNU mailing list manager.  I 
imagine may of us are sensitive to licensing.  I certainly don't mean 
to imply that the GAP folks "aren't worthy" (it is they who say this 
about commercial enterprises,) only for clarity.

Andrew, it would be clearer in the future to avoid the term "open 
source" and rather call GAP "source available."

> Dear Mailman team,
>
> I work on the GAP project
> (http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/~gap/) which is an open
> source computer algebra package whose
> development team is distributed (thinly:) across the globe.
>
> At present help requests and bug reports go to a mail alias for
> the list of  30-odd developers and to an archive, but there is no
> automated management. I am investigating the possibility of using
> Mailman as a tool for  automating the management of this
> "helpdesk". (I am aware of Reqng but would prefer to use
> something more mainstream).
>
> I envisage that our helpdesk would be a mailing list to which the
> developers belong, and to which users could send their requests.
>
> Our requirements are:
>
> - sending an automated response: We got your mail (so don't
> complain a day
> 	later you did not get a response).
>
> [I think Mailman will do this without any problem whatsoever]
>
> - Providing a method to check which requests are still open (the
> `human'
>   method we have so far does not work very well). One could
>   view the archive by thread, but it would be nice to
>   be able to delete/hide a thread when the matter is dealt with.
>
> [Is this possible, or an easy exercise for someone willing to
> learn Python?]
>
> - Periodically, or on request, send a reminder to the list about
> threads which are still active.
>
> [ditto previous question]
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Andrew Solomon
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------
> Mailman-Users maillist  -  Mailman-Users at python.org
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users


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