[Mailman-Users] Mailman archive messages(not rm, but install!)

[Brad Knowles]

At 10:17 PM -0500 12/8/06, John A. Martin wrote:

>     >> I've never claimed to be a Debian expert, and if they're
>     >> mucking about with packages that include certain features by
>     >> default in order to remove those features,
>
>  What makes you, Brad, think that Debian removes pipermail when shown
>  where it can be seen by anybody that it is included!  What mucking
>  about or other removal of features are you, or someone else, referring
>  to?

I didn't say that Debian did.  Alan McConnell said that Mailman had 
been installed without pipermail:

	Meanwhile, I am adminning(sp?), through my ISP, a new but
	quite active E-list.  But their mailman install is
	incomplete; they haven't put in Pipermail (about which
	I know _nothing_).

When asked what kind of whacked-out version of Mailman they were 
running that didn't include the built-in version of pipermail, he 
said:

	mm 2.1.5 .  But under Debian, so it has experienced/endured the
	Debian security upgrade procedures.

To which my reply was:

	Okay, now that is one of the most bizarre things I've heard of
	in a very long time.  I cannot comprehend how they could
	possibly ship a version of Mailman 2.1.x that does not
	automatically include the bundled Pipermail component.

This lead to your mildly offensive reply, where you publicly said:

	See <http://packages.debian.org/unstable/mail/mailman>
	for a description of the Debian Mailman package that
	"integrates .... archiving ...".  Further down that page
	under the heading "Download mailman" click on one of the
	"list of files" buttons and see among other things:
	"usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/Archiver/pipermail.py"

Yet nowhere on that page do I find any reference to pipermail.  If 
you had wanted to provide proof that Debian provides pipermail as 
part of the package, you should have been much less obtuse and 
offensive with your language, and much more explicit in the URL you 
provided.

Based on what I saw on that page, and the rude behaviour I was seeing 
from you, I concluded that Debian had actually done precisely what I 
had previously commented on to Alan, and led to my response:

	I've never claimed to be a Debian expert, and if they're
	mucking about with packages that include certain features
	by default in order to remove those features, then there's
	not much I can do to help the poor souls that are stuck
	with that kind of stuff.

	However, no amount of your expecting me to do "fact-checking"
	with the way that Debian is building their highly modified
	packaged versions of our software is going to change that.
	It's physically impossible to keep up with how every single
	vendor is choosing to ship our software.

Note that I do not, at any time, make an outright claim that Debian 
was stripping pipermail from the Mailman package that they were 
providing -- I said "... if they're mucking about with packages that 
include certain features by default to remove those features...".

Obviously the subtle difference in this statement was completely lost on you.

>  The first recourse when having trouble with a Debian package should
>  not be to the upstream but to the Debian maintainers, usually via a
>  Debian Bug report.

I don't think it's appropriate for us to be filing bug reports on 
these sorts of things with package maintainers of a given platform. 
If the users of those packages wish to file bug reports, I would 
fully support that.  If the package maintainers wish to come back to 
us and file bug reports against our code in our bug tracking system, 
I welcome that.

But no one here has the time to go tracking down every single bloody 
bizarre behaviour that may or may not be a result of something 
strange that a package maintainer decided to do, and then to track 
them down and sit on them until they fix their "bug".


That is, unless you're volunteering to do that, of course.  If so, 
then please just go ahead and do so, and quit making worse a 
situation that is already pretty bad to begin with.

>     Paul> I don't know what John is experiencing,
>
>  I am experiencing dismay at the innuendo followed by disinformation
>  with respect to the Debian Mailman package.

If you want clarity in a discussion, it would really help if you 
would actually provide some measure of clarity in your own postings.


If I've made a mistake, and that fact is pointed out to me in a 
reasonably neutral and constructive way, I generally accept and even 
welcome the correction and genuinely work towards a good resolution 
to the problem.

However, if your first reaction is obtuse and offensive bluster with 
baseball bats, then you damn well better be prepared for the kind of 
reaction you're going to receive.

>     Paul> but I'm using Mailman installed from Debian Stable, and have
>     Paul> been for a couple of years, and it's always had pipermail.
>
>  Yes.  AFICT the absence of pipermail from the Debian Mailman is a
>  fantasy held only by Brad Knowles as the explanation for difficulties
>  experienced by a user who remarked as follows:

If there is anyone around here that is in any kind of fantasy state, 
that would be whatever psycho ward you live in, where you think 
you're going to win friends and impress people by baffling them with 
bullshit since you obviously are not capable of dazzling anyone with 
brilliance.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad at shub-internet.org>

Trend Micro has announced that they will cancel the stop.mail-abuse.org
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