[Mailman-Users] Mailman on Mac OS X Server 10.3: Outgoingmessagesstuck in qrunner/in folder

[Brad Knowles]

At 10:20 PM -0500 12/14/06, Todd Zullinger wrote:

>  But what value would MacOSX specific integrations be to the Mailman
>  project?

Well, if they fed their changes back to us, that would allow us to 
incorporate that into future versions of the software, which would 
then be trivially easy for the vendor to upgrade to.  Apple would no 
longer have to maintain their own proprietary modified version.

So, yes -- I think that there is a very strong benefit to the vendor, 
if they contribute their code back to the project.

I think there is also a very strong benefit to the user community 
(and the vendor), because that would allow us to better support the 
software on their boxes.

>                                          I know that John Dennis of
>  Red Hat contributed the changes Red Hat made to make mailman fit in
>  better with the FHS.  But even those changes are not accepted and they
>  are far more likely to be of general use than a Mac OSX service manage
>  script.  (I'm not arguing that they should have been, just using it as
>  an example.)

If there are things that need to be done to get Mailman to fit better 
into the FHS, and they aren't just the minimum changes hacked in but 
are appropriately and fully integrated into the software, I see no 
reason who those contributions would not be warmly welcomed.

But yes, if you just hack crap in, that's not likely to be accepted. 
I'm not saying that this is what John did -- I have no knowledge of 
his changes, one way or the other.  I'm just saying that, in general, 
hackish type changes are much less likely to be accepted than ones 
where the added functionality is fully and properly integrated into 
the code.

Unfortunately, a lot of the changes most people submit are of the 
hackish variety.

>  ISTM that often when a vendor makes such changes, they make them
>  without the flexibility that would be needed to get them into the main
>  code base.

Right, the hackish changes I was talking about.

>  To me it makes a difference what sort of modifications you're talking
>  about.  Most of the modifications in this thread and similar threads
>  deal with changes a vendor or distro make to integrate mailman into
>  their specific way of doing things.  And I think those changes aren't
>  likely to be useful to the project as a whole.  So that's the part
>  where I think it's unfair to criticize vendors and distros over.

Actually, I think it's just as valuable for a vendor to contribute 
those changes back to us as ones that actually have to do with core 
functionality.

This way, when someone comes to us with a problem on platform Y, we 
can look into the code and see where platform Y puts things, and we 
can give them a straight answer as to where the log files are, where 
the commands are, etc....  Otherwise, our only option is to say that 
the Mailman-standard location for a specific file is mumblefrotz, and 
that it's up to the questioner to figure out what this means for 
their platform.

>  My point mainly is that it sometimes comes across that vendors/distros
>  who install mailman and add to or change it to integrate it into their
>  system gets painted as doing something wrong.

When they do that without contributing back to us whatever changes 
they've made to the Mailman code or scripts, the locations of files, 
etc... then I think that they have done something wrong.  Some could 
claim that they are in violation of the GNU copyleft, but at the very 
least I think that they are guilty of having failed to give adequate 
support back to the community from whom they are taking a given 
system.

>  Ideally a few Apple users would hang out on this list and could help
>  to guide those who are asking for assistance and using the Apple
>  installed Mailman.  In that way, we'd all learn a little more about
>  how to solve people's problems with Mailman.

Or maybe Apple could actually provide some actual support to their 
customers who've paid real money to get MacOS X Server.

I think your suggestion is more likely, because there are a couple of 
people in this situation who have done at least some of what you have 
suggested.  I just don't think that it's fair to put on their 
shoulders the whole sum total of providing support for all MacOS X 
Server users who need help with the Apple-provided version of Mailman 
and who cannot get Apple to give them the support that they deserve.

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

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