Mailing list software

[Todd Zullinger]

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Les Mikesell wrote:
> How many breakages are too many?

I've experienced none.  Perhaps my luck is better than I think. :)

I have refrained from updating to mailman 2.1.6 on the one server I
have that's still using python 2.2, as I am aware that mailman >=
2.1.6 should use python 2.3, as detailed in the installation notes:

   You must have the Python interpreter installed somewhere on your
   system. Mailman 2.1 requires Python 2.1 or newer, although Python
   2.3 or newer is recommended.

Judging from a lack of posts detailing breakage on the mailman-users
list, I'm guessing that others are having similar experiences as I
have.

> Perhaps I've just been spoiled by running perl where there's only
> been one syntax change in about 20 years that affected existing code
> and you didn't have to know much to fix it.

I like perl as well.  :)

Of course, weren't there issues with unicode in the switch from 5.6 to
5.8?  Maybe they were just packaging bugs but I know I saw some
problems in that transition.  (I don't recall the details well and
it's not worth digging through google to find, so if I'm way off, just
say so.)

No software is immune to change that can cause grief, and for the most
part the reason to use a distribution is so that things work together
and bugs due to incompatible versions can be worked out by the distro
packagers.

The point I wanted to make is that I've run mailman on more than a few
linux systems over the years and have not had problems due to updates
in either mailman or python.

The thread started asking for recommendations for a mailing list
manager.  As a long-time user of mailman I tried to point out that
some of the arguments against it's use didn't match my experience (and
in the case of JWZ's "Mailman is considered harmful" rant, were simply
outdated and untrue).

I'd expect that someone who had no mailing list software installed
would do the simple thing and install the software available for the
distro they are running, and in the case of fedora, there aren't any
problems with the combinations of mailman and python.

:-)

- -- 
Todd        OpenPGP -> KeyID: 0xD654075A | URL: www.pobox.com/~tmz/pgp
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