[conspire] Mailing Lists: Mailman 2 -> Mailman 3, or something different? [was some other subject]

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Elise Scher (elise.scher01 at gmail.com):

> So how can I help with all this? I would need mentoring please.
> I have some time this week.

Hi, Elise.  I didn't want your kind offer and inquiry to go unanswered,
even though I don't really have a good answer.

If you have time and interest (and some acquaintance with Python3), you
could certainly check out the tip version of Mr. Mauch's code, play with
it, study it, and submit patches to help the project along.  I'm sure he 
would be grateful, and you also would have a significant code credit.

In order for you to usefully do that, though, clearly you would need to
have at least a toy installation of his variant of Mailman2, with a
set-up MTA configured to talk to it.  Perhaps there is a way to reduce
the pain potential in a somehow-restricted MTA setup, so (e.g.) you're
not sucked into the antispam war and all the headaches that come with
that, but I'm not puzzling out exactly how, off the top of my head.  

To be clear, I've not personally done MTA setup from scratch in dog
years, but my hunch is that getting from "I did an apt-get install" 
of an MTA to "my MTA setup is reasonable, I'm not being overwhelmed, and 
the Internet doesn't hate me" is non-trivial.

Normally for a public-facing MTA with an Internet presence, that you
expect to send and receive e-mail, the MTA host must have a static IP,
too.  (You might get around this problem by having a pair of machines
on private IP that are protected from the Internet, as a toy setup to
test sending and receiving mail strictly locally.)

You're doubtless right that you'd need some mentoring, but I'm not sure
where, and definitely not me, for a host of reasons including my not
being a Python3 coder.

Perhaps you could contact Mr. Mauch and find out how you could best have
synergy with him.

There is also the thorny question, always relevant in both open source
and proprietary (one hopes, paid) coding, about what projects are viable
and have a future.  I stressed the somewhat tenuous (current) state of Mr.
Mauch's project to hold that question up to the light -- but have no
wisdom about whether it's a sound bet, going forward.  Maybe yes, maybe
no.

Ultimately, it's your time and energy.

-- 
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