[Mailman-Users] The last release from the GNU Mailman project

[Jim Popovitch]

On Fri, 2020-02-28 at 10:07 -0800, Mark Sapiro wrote:
> On 2/28/20 6:17 AM, Jim Popovitch via Mailman-Users wrote:
> > On Fri, 2020-02-28 at 19:52 +0900, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
> > > Brian Carpenter writes:
> > > 
> > >  > I have hired a professional PHP developer to begin work on a new 
> > >  > admin/forum interface for Mailman 3.
> > > 
> > > Too bad.  I really sympathize with your goals but am unlikely to be
> > > able to contribute directly to implementation (assuming an eventual
> > > open-sourcing).  Never learned PHP, not going to do it anytime soon.
> > 
> > Stephen, It's difficult for me to parse your thought process on this.
> > Why do you say "Too bad" about someone wanting to improve something that
> > you admit you want no part of?
> 
> Well, Steve channeled me earlier, so I'll return the favor. I think
> Steve is saying "Too bad" he is only talking about the choice of PHP as
> a platform rather than Python. We absolutely encourage people to develop
> alternatives to Postorius and HyperKitty for archiving and web
> management of Mailman. I think all Steve is saying is he could be more
> helpful with Python as opposed to PHP.
> 
> See this paragraph:
> 
> > > That's OK, the point of REST is so *you* *can* do that.  I can only
> > > speak for myself, but we can help to some extent on the Python side of
> > > the REST interface.
> 
> 
> > Who is this "we", you referenced them a few times in this email.
> 
> See the initial paragraph in the Acknowledgements section at
> <https://www.list.org/>;.
> 
> 
> 
> > I'm fairly confident in saying that Mark has said (repeatedly now) that
> > there will never ever ever ever ever be another Mailman2 release beyond
> > v2.1.30.  Stephen, why do you say there will be? Do you have the project
> > authority to make that statement?  Who do I beleive?
> 
> Actually, I have said there will not be another release from the GNU
> Mailman project. That does not preclude anyone from forking that project
> from Launchpad and doing whatever with it.

I get that, but that sounds sharply different than what Stephen was
saying.

> I personally am not interested in porting Mailman 2 to Python 3. That's
> already been done. The result, with a real backend database and some
> extensions such as the concept of "user" that doesn't exist in MM 2, is
> Mailman 3 core.
> 
> 
> > What I'm reading between the lines is that
> > nothing but Django was considered for MM3 (by "we") and everything else
> > is inferior and not worth the time.  I'd love to be wrong on that.
> 
> The web based archiving and list management we distribute are based on
> Django because that's how the people who developed those things wanted
> to do it.
> 
> The whole point of Mailman 3 is all that stuff is separate from the core
> engine and communicates with core via a REST API, so there can be lots
> of different web management UIs. We knew if we released Mailman 3 core
> only without a web UI for list management and archive access, no one
> would use it, so we needed those things and the people who were willing
> to implement them built what we have.
> 
> We certainly hoped that there would be people like Brian implementing
> alternatives and we're glad to see it.
> 
> > > Agreed.  I didn't even know bounce processing wasn't working until
> > > this summer (my production lists are all in-house to personal
> > > acquaintances to same-university addresses -- if mail isn't flowing to
> > > somebody, it's not going to anybody, even Mailman!)
> > 
> > MM3 has been on python.org for a while, was it not noticed there either?
> 
> Of course. We began discussing this almost 3 years ago
> <https://gitlab.com/mailman/mailman/issues/343#note_31870366>;. The
> implementation was mostly done last year by a GSOC student.

I think that is Brian's and a lot of other people's concern.  3 years to
implement something into MM3 that was a core feature in MM2.  I realize
this next question is going to sound bombastic, I assure you it's not
meant that way:  What other things are missing or not available
presently in MM3 that are taken for granite in MM2?

> We are a small project. We have very few people working on Mailman on a
> regular basis, and everyone is a volunteer, no one is paid. If you want
> things to happen faster, please contribute.
> 

~$ grep "Jim Popovitch" ~/devel/Mailman/NEWS | wc -l
10

I don't think that I've been sitting on the fence, in fact I think I've
been contributing a lot if you include not just source contributions but
also the PPAs.  I wouldn't say that I'm a principal developer, but I'm
not off in some remote corner unfamiliar with the product and project.

-Jim P.