aboutsummaryrefslogtreecommitdiffstats
path: root/admin/www/jwzrebuttal.ht
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
author <>2003-03-31 21:01:24 +0000
committer <>2003-03-31 21:01:24 +0000
commit1948a22a87351b8a4c857520f22dd8558d47fdb9 (patch)
tree16ad6c25ed95c8151cb7e7f5cb3cb4d7d187bca1 /admin/www/jwzrebuttal.ht
parenta808c4f9cb95c40af498d4a4a51599b57629925f (diff)
downloadmailman2-1948a22a87351b8a4c857520f22dd8558d47fdb9.tar.gz
mailman2-1948a22a87351b8a4c857520f22dd8558d47fdb9.tar.xz
mailman2-1948a22a87351b8a4c857520f22dd8558d47fdb9.zip
This commit was manufactured by cvs2svn to create branch
'Release_2_1-maint'.
Diffstat (limited to '')
-rw-r--r--admin/www/jwzrebuttal.ht88
-rw-r--r--admin/www/jwzrebuttal.html228
2 files changed, 316 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/admin/www/jwzrebuttal.ht b/admin/www/jwzrebuttal.ht
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..74b9212a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/admin/www/jwzrebuttal.ht
@@ -0,0 +1,88 @@
+Title: Mailman Considered Beneficial
+Author: Barry Warsaw
+Author-email: barry@python.org
+Links: links.h rant-links.h
+
+<h3>Mailman Considered Beneficial</h3>
+
+Jamie Zawinski posted an article in 2002 titled <a
+href="http://www.jwz.org/doc/mailman.html">Mailman Considered
+Harmful</a>. I know Jamie and respect him, but I respectfully
+disagree with his assessment. You'd be worried if I didn't, eh?
+
+<p>To give Jamie the benefit of the doubt, I believe he was reviewing
+older versions of the Mailman software, where some of his complaints
+may have been appropriate. Here is a rebuttal to his
+article, based on
+<a href="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=103">the
+latest stable release of Mailman 2.1</a>, unless otherwise specified.
+
+<h4>Mailman is a pain in the ass for the end user.</h4>
+
+Jamie must have reviewed a pre-2.0 version, because Mailman releases
+since 2.0 have implemented the "sane" recipe. Indeed it would be
+insane not to. I may be mad, but I'm not insane. In fact, in Mailman
+2.1, there are several ways to get unsubscribed, any one of which will
+work just fine:
+
+<ul>
+ <li>Send a message to <em>list</em>-leave or <em>list</em>-unsubscribe and
+ reply to the confirmation message. It doesn't matter at all what
+ is in your original message.
+ <li>Mail "unsubscribe" to the <em>list</em>-request address and
+ reply to the confirmation message.
+ <li>Use a mail reader that understands the standard
+ <a href="http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2369.html">RFC 2369</a>
+ List-Unsubscribe header, then just click on that header and
+ reply to the confirmation message.
+ <li>Visit your <em>user's options page</em>, click on the
+ Unsubscribe button and reply to the confirmation message.
+ Note that with Mailman 2.1, mailing lists can be personalized,
+ which means the url to your options page can be included in
+ the footer of every message you get from the list (digests
+ currently excluded).
+</ul>
+
+What could be simpler?
+
+<h4>Mailman's password mechanism provides zero security.</h4>
+
+I disagree with Jamie about the utility of Mailman's passwords because
+in general they do prevent malicious people from changing your
+subscription options out from under you. But I will also concede that
+he has a point about password management by naive users, so you should
+know that it is trivial to disable monthly password reminders, either
+on a list-wide basis or on a per-user basis.
+
+<p>Monthly password reminders serve additional purposes though: they
+remind you of lists you are on which you may have forgotten about,
+they remind you about how to get unsubscribed from such lists, and
+they offer an opportunity for lists to cull their membership of
+non-functioning addresses. In Mailman 2.1, the monthly reminders can
+be sent out with <a
+href="http://cr.yp.to/proto/verp.txt">VERP</a>-like envelopes, Mailman
+can unambiguously parse any bounces from dead addresses, and can use
+this information to automatically disable or delete disappeared
+members.
+
+<p>When you subscribe to a mailing list, the password is completely
+optional -- omit it and Mailman generates a random one for you. You
+generally don't need to know your password except if you want to
+change your delivery options, e.g. to temporarily disable delivery
+while you're on vacation, or to switch to digest delivery, subscribe
+to topics, etc. For simple membership management (subscribing and
+unsubscribing), you never need to know it. The user options
+<b>are</b> useful.
+
+<h4>Web-based subscriptions</h4>
+
+If all you care about is web-based subscriptions, then yes it's pretty
+easy to set up a simple CGI to do this. It's just as easy to do with
+Mailman as any other mailing list software. Note though, that
+Mailman's web interface is much more sophisticated because you can do
+nearly all the list configuration through the web. Okay, this is of
+primary benefit for list owners rather than list members, and Jamie's
+rant is focused on the member experience. Note though, that Mailman's
+subscription page also gives the user the option of selecting a
+default language (for multilingual lists) and their preferred delivery
+mechanism (digests or regular delivery).
diff --git a/admin/www/jwzrebuttal.html b/admin/www/jwzrebuttal.html
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..b3d86fcc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/admin/www/jwzrebuttal.html
@@ -0,0 +1,228 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
+<html>
+<!-- THIS PAGE IS AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED. DO NOT EDIT. -->
+<!-- Sun Mar 23 00:31:21 2003 -->
+<!-- USING HT2HTML 2.0 -->
+<!-- SEE http://ht2html.sf.net -->
+<!-- User-specified headers:
+Title: Mailman Considered Beneficial
+
+-->
+
+<head>
+<title>Mailman Considered Beneficial</title>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=us-ascii">
+<meta name="generator" content="HT2HTML/2.0">
+<style type="text/css">
+body { margin: 0px; }
+</style>
+</head>
+<body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000"
+ marginwidth="0" marginheight="0"
+ link="#0000bb" vlink="#551a8b"
+ alink="#ff0000">
+<!-- start of page table -->
+<table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
+<!-- start of banner row -->
+<tr>
+<!-- start of corner cells -->
+<td width="150" valign="middle" bgcolor="white" class="corner">
+
+<center>
+ <a href="./index.html">
+ <img border=0 src="./images/logo-70.jpg"></a></center> </td>
+<td width="15" bgcolor="#eecfa1">&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><!--spacer-->
+<!-- end of corner cells -->
+<!-- start of banner -->
+<td width="90%" bgcolor="#eecfa1" class="banner">
+<!-- start of site links table -->
+<table width="100%" border="0"
+CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0
+ bgcolor="#ffffff">
+<tr>
+ <td bgcolor="#eecfa1">
+<a href="./index.html">Home</a>
+ </td>
+ <td bgcolor="#eecfa1">
+<a href="./docs.html">Documentation</a>
+ </td>
+ <td bgcolor="#eecfa1">
+<a href="./lists.html">Mailing lists</a>
+ </td>
+</tr><tr>
+ <td bgcolor="#eecfa1">
+<a href="./help.html">Help</a>
+ </td>
+ <td bgcolor="#eecfa1">
+<a href="./download.html">Download</a>
+ </td>
+ <td bgcolor="#eecfa1">
+<a href="./devs.html">Developers</a>
+ </td>
+</tr>
+</table><!-- end of site links table -->
+
+</td><!-- end of banner -->
+</tr><!-- end of banner row -->
+<tr><!-- start of sidebar/body row -->
+<!-- start of sidebar cells -->
+<td width="150" valign="top" bgcolor="#eecfa1" class="sidebar">
+<!-- start of sidebar table -->
+<table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3"
+ bgcolor="#ffffff">
+<tr><td bgcolor="#36648b"><b><font color="#ffffff">
+Overview
+</font></b></td></tr>
+<tr><td bgcolor="#eecfa1">
+<a href="index.html">Home</a>
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td bgcolor="#eecfa1">
+<a href="features.html">Features</a>
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td bgcolor="#eecfa1">
+<a href="i18n.html">Internationalization</a>
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td bgcolor="#eecfa1">
+<a href="otherstuff.html">Rants, Papers, and Logos</a>
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td bgcolor="#eecfa1">
+<a href="inthenews.html">Mailman in Use</a>
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td bgcolor="#eecfa1">
+<a href="prev.html">Previous Releases</a>
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td bgcolor="#eecfa1">
+<a href="bugs.html">Bugs and Patches</a>
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td bgcolor="#eecfa1">
+<a href="mirrors.html">Mirrors</a>
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td bgcolor="#eecfa1">&nbsp;
+<tr><td bgcolor="#36648b"><b><font color="#ffffff">
+Rants
+</font></b></td></tr>
+<tr><td bgcolor="#eecfa1">
+<b>Mailman Considered Beneficial</b>
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td bgcolor="#eecfa1">&nbsp;
+<tr><td bgcolor="#36648b"><b><font color="#ffffff">
+Email Us
+</font></b></td></tr>
+<tr><td bgcolor="#eecfa1">
+<a href="mailto:barry@python.org">Barry Warsaw</a>
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td bgcolor="#eecfa1">
+&nbsp;
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td bgcolor="#eecfa1">
+<a href="http://www.python.org/"><img border=0
+ src="./images/PythonPoweredSmall.png"
+ ></a>&nbsp;<a href="http://sourceforge.net"><img
+ src="http://sourceforge.net/sflogo.php?group_id=103"
+ width="88" height="31" border="0"
+ alt="SourceForge Logo"></a>
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td bgcolor="#eecfa1">
+&nbsp;
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td bgcolor="#eecfa1">
+&copy; 1998-2003
+Free Software Foundation, Inc. Verbatim copying and distribution of this
+entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.
+
+</td></tr>
+</table><!-- end of sidebar table -->
+
+</td>
+<td width="15">&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><!--spacer-->
+<!-- end of sidebar cell -->
+<!-- start of body cell -->
+<td valign="top" width="90%" class="body"><br>
+<h3>Mailman Considered Beneficial</h3>
+
+Jamie Zawinski posted an article in 2002 titled <a
+href="http://www.jwz.org/doc/mailman.html">Mailman Considered
+Harmful</a>. I know Jamie and respect him, but I respectfully
+disagree with his assessment. You'd be worried if I didn't, eh?
+
+<p>To give Jamie the benefit of the doubt, I believe he was reviewing
+older versions of the Mailman software, where some of his complaints
+may have been appropriate. Here is a rebuttal to his
+article, based on
+<a href="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=103">the
+latest stable release of Mailman 2.1</a>, unless otherwise specified.
+
+<h4>Mailman is a pain in the ass for the end user.</h4>
+
+Jamie must have reviewed a pre-2.0 version, because Mailman releases
+since 2.0 have implemented the "sane" recipe. Indeed it would be
+insane not to. I may be mad, but I'm not insane. In fact, in Mailman
+2.1, there are several ways to get unsubscribed, any one of which will
+work just fine:
+
+<ul>
+ <li>Send a message to <em>list</em>-leave or <em>list</em>-unsubscribe and
+ reply to the confirmation message. It doesn't matter at all what
+ is in your original message.
+ <li>Mail "unsubscribe" to the <em>list</em>-request address and
+ reply to the confirmation message.
+ <li>Use a mail reader that understands the standard
+ <a href="http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2369.html">RFC 2369</a>
+ List-Unsubscribe header, then just click on that header and
+ reply to the confirmation message.
+ <li>Visit your <em>user's options page</em>, click on the
+ Unsubscribe button and reply to the confirmation message.
+ Note that with Mailman 2.1, mailing lists can be personalized,
+ which means the url to your options page can be included in
+ the footer of every message you get from the list (digests
+ currently excluded).
+</ul>
+
+What could be simpler?
+
+<h4>Mailman's password mechanism provides zero security.</h4>
+
+I disagree with Jamie about the utility of Mailman's passwords because
+in general they do prevent malicious people from changing your
+subscription options out from under you. But I will also concede that
+he has a point about password management by naive users, so you should
+know that it is trivial to disable monthly password reminders, either
+on a list-wide basis or on a per-user basis.
+
+<p>Monthly password reminders serve additional purposes though: they
+remind you of lists you are on which you may have forgotten about,
+they remind you about how to get unsubscribed from such lists, and
+they offer an opportunity for lists to cull their membership of
+non-functioning addresses. In Mailman 2.1, the monthly reminders can
+be sent out with <a
+href="http://cr.yp.to/proto/verp.txt">VERP</a>-like envelopes, Mailman
+can unambiguously parse any bounces from dead addresses, and can use
+this information to automatically disable or delete disappeared
+members.
+
+<p>When you subscribe to a mailing list, the password is completely
+optional -- omit it and Mailman generates a random one for you. You
+generally don't need to know your password except if you want to
+change your delivery options, e.g. to temporarily disable delivery
+while you're on vacation, or to switch to digest delivery, subscribe
+to topics, etc. For simple membership management (subscribing and
+unsubscribing), you never need to know it. The user options
+<b>are</b> useful.
+
+<h4>Web-based subscriptions</h4>
+
+If all you care about is web-based subscriptions, then yes it's pretty
+easy to set up a simple CGI to do this. It's just as easy to do with
+Mailman as any other mailing list software. Note though, that
+Mailman's web interface is much more sophisticated because you can do
+nearly all the list configuration through the web. Okay, this is of
+primary benefit for list owners rather than list members, and Jamie's
+rant is focused on the member experience. Note though, that Mailman's
+subscription page also gives the user the option of selecting a
+default language (for multilingual lists) and their preferred delivery
+mechanism (digests or regular delivery).
+
+</td><!-- end of body cell -->
+</tr><!-- end of sidebar/body row -->
+</table><!-- end of page table -->
+</body></html>