[Mailman-Users] Contemplating new installation

[Brad Knowles]

At 10:22 PM -0400 2006-07-26, Todd Zullinger wrote:

>>  They've done whatever they've done and didn't ask for any
>>  involvement from us.
>
>  That doesn't seem entirely fair to the Red Hat/Fedora folks.  John
>  Dennis of Red Hat very clearly solicited comment on these changes on
>  mailman-developers back in Oct 2004 and submitted a patch as well[1].

I don't recall anyone ever contacting us regarding how we would like 
to see Mailman get packaged together, but clearly I have at least 
missed his message if nothing else.  I will also state that John is 
one of the more active participants on our lists, and we appreciate 
his involvement in the community.

That said, they have certain goals towards their packaged 
installation of Mailman (such as making it FHS compliant), and that 
leads to their making a fairly substantial number of changes to the 
system.  And that's probably not really avoidable, but it does mean 
that supporting the Red Hat packaged version of Mailman can be 
somewhat different than supporting a source-installed version, if for 
no other reason than the files are stored in different places.


As far as things go, the official Red Hat package is probably as 
close to the source-installed version as they could reasonably manage 
under the circumstances, and would probably be a good guide for other 
vendors to follow -- assuming they have similar goals.

If we had the same level of involvement in our community from other 
vendors as we get from John and the Red Hat folks, I think we'd be 
much happier campers.


Thanks for the correction, and giving me the opportunity to clarify my views.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad at stop.mail-abuse.org>

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

     -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
     Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755

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