[conspire] (forw) conspire unsubscribe notification

[Rick Moen]

I'm sorry, I wasn't quite done with that -- and so hit the Send command
prematurely.

The fact that Ruben apparently _is_ (still or again, after fifteen years
of bad results) running a C-R antispam responder script means,
specifically, that he would be spamming _you_, the people who post to
this mailing list -- because that is what C-R bots do:  They're like a
butler that sends mail (the 'challenge') to anyone who tries to
communicate with its employer, saying 'Because my employer is no longer
willing to deal with spam, I'm sending _you_ spam to inform you about
the special hoops [the 'response'] you must go through to reach him.'

That is why C-R bots are the Worst Antispam Idea Ever.  They get used by
people whose take on the world is 'Screw all the rest of you.  I'm going
to deal with my spam problem by creating some of my own.'

And I infer that Ruben would rather unsubscribe than risk getting
thrown off and banned for spamming everyone who posts here -- which is a
peculiar but telling response to being told 'Ruben, C-R is an
infamously terrible idea, and you should stop doing it.'


I should explain the comment about majordomo.  Majordomo is a very
early, quite primitive mailing list manager (MLM) popular in the 1990s.
I ran majordomo in 1999.  Then, when GNU Mailman became usable, I shed
tears of joy and switched to it in 2000 -- which was pretty much
everyone's experience (e.g., SVLUG did exactly the same).

Why tears of joy?  (a) majordomo is antique, crufty perl.  (b) majordomo
is under a proprietary licence.  (c) Unlike GNU Mailman, majodomo omits
Web archiving.  (d) Unlike GNU Mailman, majordomo fails to intercept and
redirect 'administrivia' postings such as 'unsubscribe me' requests.
(e) majordomo requires using /etc/aliases lines with redirection pipes
to send incoming SMTP mail to its Perl scripts, a technique so
security-risky that every other MLM gave up on it in 2000.  (f)
majordomo hasn't been maintained since around 2001, probably at least in
part because its proprietary licensing deters coders.  (They will tend
to prefer open-source alternatives.)


Ruben had sent out an invitation to members of Don Marti's
linux-elitists list to join Ruben's social NYC mailing list, Hangout.
I did so -- and was dumbfounded to notice it uses majordomo.

I asked Ruben in private mail if it wouldn't be smarter to run an open
source MLM from this millennium.  He responded 'I hate Python.'

Now, most of you are thinking 'WTF?', which is a pretty reasonable
reaction.  GNU Mailman is written in (quite good) Python.  It should be
noted that Mailman is a classic in the Just Works[tm] category.  You
really don't need to hack on it.  It's extremely reliable and fine just
the way it is.  So, except for five minutes at the beginning when you
tweak the /usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/Defaults.py file, and maybe the 
/usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/mm_cfg.py and /etc/mailman/sitelist.cfg ones, 
you're not even aware of what language it's in.

But Ruben hates Python.  Fair enough.  Does that mean he's stuck with
majordomo?  Um.... no.  The _other_ very popular modern MLM, Sympa, is 
is very heavy duty and modern MLM written in Perl with a little C.  It's
a bit overcomplicated for my taste, but is quite good.

There is also a from-scratch modern-ish (well, somewhat more modern) 
reimplementation of majordomo called majordomo2, issued under an open
source licence closely based on Apache License.  I mentioned both of
these things to Ruben a couple of weeks ago.

But he uses majordomo because 'I hate Python.'