From List-Managers-Owner Mon Feb 1 07:04:55 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA09824; Mon, 1 Feb 93 07:04:55 PST Received: from yonge.csri.toronto.edu by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA09817; Mon, 1 Feb 93 07:04:49 PST Received: from alias by yonge.csri.toronto.edu with UUCP id <14412>; Mon, 1 Feb 1993 10:04:38 -0500 Received: from dino.alias.com by barney.alias.com with SMTP id AA04936 (5.65a/IDA-1.4.2 for tasos@cs.bu.edu); Mon, 1 Feb 93 09:53:57 -0500 Received: by dino.alias.com id AA02867 (5.65a/IDA-1.4.2 for list-managers@greatcircle.com); Mon, 1 Feb 93 09:53:54 -0500 From: chk@alias.com (C. Harald Koch) Message-Id: <9302011453.AA02867@dino.alias.com> Subject: Re: UNIX listserv To: tasos@cs.bu.edu (Anastasios Kotsikonas) Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1993 09:53:48 -0500 Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: <9301301446.AA07305@cs.bu.edu> from "Anastasios Kotsikonas" at Jan 30, 93 09:46:50 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL8] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 926 Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > > Simply getting rid of the word 'copyright' and the symbol '(c)' makes > > the header line acceptable. > > I have let traffic on this subject go by without comment because talk is > cheap. Instead of criticing past comments, I will simply say that the > Copyright notice will be removed only if the software is not threated by > Governement practices under FAR 52.227-19(c) and DFAR 252.227-7013(c)(1)(ii)/ > (iii). Huh? What does this have to do with putting Copyright and (c) headers into the *messages* processed by UNIX Listserver? I don't understand what you're saying here; please explain... -- Main's Law: For every | C. Harald Koch Alias Research, Inc. Toronto, ON action, there is an equal | chk@alias.com (work-related mail) and opposite goverment | chk@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (permanent address) program. | VE3TLA@VE3OY.#SCON.ON.CA.NA (AMPRNet) From List-Managers-Owner Mon Feb 1 08:09:05 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA10043; Mon, 1 Feb 93 08:09:05 PST Received: from cs-mail.bu.edu by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA10036; Mon, 1 Feb 93 08:09:00 PST Received: from CS.BU.EDU by cs-mail.bu.edu (5.61+++/SMI-4.0.3) id AA22649; Mon, 1 Feb 93 11:09:28 -0500 From: tasos@cs.bu.edu (Anastasios Kotsikonas) Received: by cs.bu.edu (5.61+++/Spike-2.0) id AA17995; Mon, 1 Feb 93 11:09:27 -0500 Date: Mon, 1 Feb 93 11:09:27 -0500 Message-Id: <9302011609.AA17995@cs.bu.edu> To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: UNIX listserv Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > What does this have to do with putting Copyright and (c) headers into the > *messages* processed by UNIX Listserver? I don't understand what you're > saying here; please explain... I do not have the time to into detail but let me just say that the Copyright notice is actually incomplete: it should refer to this FAR and DFAR (for Department of Defense users) numbers to be complete; it would then be rediculously long and messy. I leave it up to you to investigate if you wish -- I have done my homework long ago!!! Tasos From List-Managers-Owner Mon Feb 1 08:26:23 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA10084; Mon, 1 Feb 93 08:26:23 PST Received: from sws1.CTD.ORNL.GOV by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA10076; Mon, 1 Feb 93 08:26:15 PST Received: by sws1.CTD.ORNL.GOV (5.65/DEC-Ultrix/4.3) id AA18914; Mon, 1 Feb 1993 11:26:10 -0500 Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1993 11:26:10 -0500 From: Dave Sill Message-Id: <9302011626.AA18914@sws1.CTD.ORNL.GOV> To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: <9302011609.AA17995@cs.bu.edu> Subject: Re: UNIX listserv Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Anastasios Kotsikonas writes: > >I do not have the time to into detail but let me just say that the Copyright >notice is actually incomplete: it should refer to this FAR and DFAR (for >Department of Defense users) numbers to be complete; it would then be >rediculously long and messy. I leave it up to you to investigate if you >wish -- I have done my homework long ago!!! You did your homework, but did you get the right answers? :-) You haven't said anything yet to bolster your argument that such notice is required in the output of your program. If it's really necessary, why are you the only one doing it? Why aren't vendors of commercial mail products doing it? I work for a government contractor, and used to work directly for the U.S. Navy, and none of the software we use(d) mentions FAR's or DFAR's outside the license agreement or source code. I'm not saying you're wrong--I'm just not convinced you're right. -- Dave Sill (de5@ornl.gov) Computers should work the way beginners Martin Marietta Energy Systems expect them to, and one day they will. Workstation Support -- Ted Nelson From List-Managers-Owner Mon Feb 1 09:16:45 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA10210; Mon, 1 Feb 93 09:16:45 PST Received: from yonge.csri.toronto.edu by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA10202; Mon, 1 Feb 93 09:16:38 PST Received: from alias by yonge.csri.toronto.edu with UUCP id <14409>; Mon, 1 Feb 1993 12:04:41 -0500 Received: from dino.alias.com by barney.alias.com with SMTP id AA14310 (5.65a/IDA-1.4.2 for tasos@cs.bu.edu); Mon, 1 Feb 93 11:47:37 -0500 Received: by dino.alias.com id AA08443 (5.65a/IDA-1.4.2 for list-managers@greatcircle.com); Mon, 1 Feb 93 11:47:37 -0500 From: chk@alias.com (C. Harald Koch) Message-Id: <9302011647.AA08443@dino.alias.com> Subject: Re: UNIX listserv To: tasos@cs.bu.edu (Anastasios Kotsikonas) Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1993 11:47:34 -0500 Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: <9302011608.AA17981@cs.bu.edu> from "Anastasios Kotsikonas" at Feb 1, 93 11:08:21 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL8] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1137 Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > I have done my homework long ago!!! Obviously not, when it comes to Copyright law. > PS: And please try to understand that the header line refers to the software > and not the message. Enough of this legal discussion. I understand that this is your claim. I also understand that your claim is incorrect. Whether you claim this or not is irrelevant. Copyright law says that the header you are adding applies to the message. The net result is that you're asserting a copyright, under your name, on messages that anybody sends to any mailing list using your software. That's just plain illegal, and I want you to change it. Is it really that difficult for you to change this message? IT DOESN'T AFFECT THE COPYRIGHT STATUS OF YOUR SOFTWARE! Please, change the header so that it doesn't say "Copyright" or "(c)". -- Main's Law: For every | C. Harald Koch Alias Research, Inc. Toronto, ON action, there is an equal | chk@alias.com (work-related mail) and opposite goverment | chk@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (permanent address) program. | VE3TLA@VE3OY.#SCON.ON.CA.NA (AMPRNet) From List-Managers-Owner Mon Feb 1 23:51:41 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA16522; Mon, 1 Feb 93 23:51:41 GMT Received: from localhost by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA16514; Mon, 1 Feb 93 15:50:52 PST Message-Id: <9302012350.AA16514@mycroft.GreatCircle.COM> To: Dave Hayes Cc: "Michael H. Morse" , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: list of beginner's InterNet books In-Reply-To: Your message of Thu, 21 Jan 93 15:58:35 -0800 Date: Mon, 01 Feb 93 15:50:50 -0800 From: Brent Chapman Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Dave Hayes writes: # > One of the reasons we've resisted this approach in the past is that we # > are also a BITNET host, and some (anyone care to make a guess what # > percentage?) BITNET sites cannot send mail to addresses that have over # > 8 characters. # # Hmmm...can you enforce a method of sending things to a list such that only # those people on that list can send mail to it? Otherwise, the mail is bounced # to a "-request" address... That is technically feasible, but I don't think it's a good solution. Many people are on lists via local exploders (i.e., they subscribe to "list-managers-redist@their_site.their_net", which is in turn subscribed to the main list). Many people post from an address different than the one they subscribe with (i.e., they subscribe with address "user@domain.net", but they post from "user@workstation.domain.net"). -Brent -- Brent Chapman Great Circle Associates Brent@GreatCircle.COM 1057 West Dana Street +1 415 962 0841 Mountain View, CA 94041 From List-Managers-Owner Mon Feb 1 23:59:10 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA16621; Mon, 1 Feb 93 23:59:10 GMT Received: from localhost by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA16611; Mon, 1 Feb 93 15:58:56 PST Message-Id: <9302012358.AA16611@mycroft.GreatCircle.COM> To: Christophe Wolfhugel Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Header fields to change or add before distributing In-Reply-To: Your message of Wed, 27 Jan 1993 18:42:50 +0100 (MET) Date: Mon, 01 Feb 93 15:58:55 -0800 From: Brent Chapman Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Christophe Wolfhugel writes: # |- Add Precedence: bulk # # Correct me if I'm wrong: bulk will not generate error messages # (bounce, user unknown, etc..) ? That depends on what the receiving (bouncing) site's sendmail.cf file says. If the sendmail.cf file has a "Pbulk" line that sets the precedence for "bulk" to a negative number, then you won't get bounces back from that site. Such a line is included in the sample sendmail.cf shipped with the Berkeley sendmail sources, and most vendors (except for Sun) seem to have carried it through to their own distributed sendmail.cf files. # |- Change the envelope From address into testlist-request@some.where . # # I like this. Many software, like BITNET's Listserv, keep the sender's from # address which is great for getting bounces and of course there is no admin # to remove those users from the list. Make it configurable, though. On my mailing lists, for example, mail to -request gets you a recording that tells you how to use Majordomo or how to contact a human, and I want bounces to come back to -owner. # Also, what is your position regarding other fields like extended ones # (X-Face and stuff) ? In my opinion, unless you've got a specific reason to remove it or change it, then you should leave it alone. -Brent -- Brent Chapman Great Circle Associates Brent@GreatCircle.COM 1057 West Dana Street +1 415 962 0841 Mountain View, CA 94041 From List-Managers-Owner Tue Feb 2 00:04:34 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA16669; Tue, 2 Feb 93 00:04:34 GMT Received: from apple.com by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA16661; Mon, 1 Feb 93 16:04:19 PST Received: by apple.com (5.61/7-Aug-1992-eef) id AA29771; Mon, 1 Feb 93 16:04:39 -0800 for List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Mon, 1 Feb 93 16:04:39 -0800 From: I Bleed Teal Message-Id: <9302020004.AA29771@apple.com> To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Talk Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I'll agree with Tasos on one thing. Talk is very cheap. And a little knowledge is dangerous, especially when a lot of knowledge is necessary. And with that, I'll go crawl back into the woodwork, since I don't believe in talking to brick walls. But if Tasos had any knowledge of copyright, he wouldn't be saying what he was saying. I just hope he doesn't learn the hard way. chuq From List-Managers-Owner Tue Feb 2 00:10:12 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA16814; Tue, 2 Feb 93 00:10:12 GMT Received: from elxr.jpl.Nasa.Gov (elxr-fddi.jpl.nasa.gov) by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA16781; Mon, 1 Feb 93 16:10:01 PST Received: by elxr.jpl.Nasa.Gov (4.1/SMI-4.1+DXRm2.2) id AA13533; Mon, 1 Feb 93 16:10:30 PST Message-Id: <9302020010.AA13533@elxr.jpl.Nasa.Gov> To: Brent Chapman Cc: "Michael H. Morse" , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: list of beginner's InterNet books Date: Mon, 01 Feb 93 16:10:29 -0800 From: Dave Hayes Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > # Hmmm...can you enforce a method of sending things to a list such that only > # those people on that list can send mail to it? Otherwise, the mail is bounced > # to a "-request" address... > Many people are on lists via local exploders (i.e., they subscribe to > "list-managers-redist@their_site.their_net", which is in turn > subscribed to the main list). These exploders can get out of hand, can't they? ;-) Is it possible to determine the network of exploders automatically without disturbing the entire list? ------ Dave Hayes - Network & Communications Engineering - JPL / NASA - Pasadena CA dave@elxr.jpl.nasa.gov dave@jato.jpl.nasa.gov ...usc!elroy!dxh >From your first day at school you are cut off from life to make theories From List-Managers-Owner Tue Feb 2 00:39:04 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA17051; Tue, 2 Feb 93 00:39:04 GMT Received: from localhost by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA17042; Mon, 1 Feb 93 16:39:00 PST Message-Id: <9302020039.AA17042@mycroft.GreatCircle.COM> To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Header fields to change or add before distributing In-Reply-To: Your message of Fri, 29 Jan 1993 14:48:52 +0100 Date: Mon, 01 Feb 93 16:38:58 -0800 From: Brent Chapman Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk berg@pool.informatik.rwth-aachen.de (Stephen R. van den Berg) writes: # Christophe Wolfhugel wrote: # # >Then I don't think it is wise to use bulk mail because this will make # >lists grow for ever if no bounces are generated. # # But that's not what will happen. Like I said, by default, sendmail throws # in "bulk" mail with a precedence value of "0". Which means that bounces are # indeed generated. # # Bounces for "bulk" mail are only not generated if someone were so stupid as # to assign to bulk a precedence value lower than "0" (as far as I know, noone # has done this). Nice theory, but wrong. Here's the relevant excerpt from the sample sendmail.cf file included with the 5.67 release: Pfirst-class=0 Pspecial-delivery=100 Pbulk=-60 Pjunk=-100 That same set of priorities is included in Sendmail 5.65 as well, and has probably been there through many releases. The default sendmail.cf file shipped by many vendors (Sun is a notable exception) is usually very closely related to the sample .cf file provided by Berkeley in the Sendmail distribution. This means that setting "Pbulk" to a negative number is the norm, rather than the exception. -Brent -- Brent Chapman Great Circle Associates Brent@GreatCircle.COM 1057 West Dana Street +1 415 962 0841 Mountain View, CA 94041 From List-Managers-Owner Tue Feb 2 01:59:45 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA17786; Tue, 2 Feb 93 01:59:45 GMT Received: from CORNELLC.cit.cornell.edu by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA17778; Mon, 1 Feb 93 17:59:26 PST Received: from rex.Graphics.Cornell.edu by CORNELLC.cit.cornell.edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with TCP; Mon, 01 Feb 93 20:59:18 EST Received: by rex.Graphics.Cornell.edu (5.57/Ultrix3.0-C) id AA05458; Mon, 1 Feb 93 20:59:44 -0500 Message-Id: <9302020159.AA05458@rex.Graphics.Cornell.edu> To: I Bleed Teal Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM, mkc@Graphics.Cornell.edu Subject: Re: Talk In-Reply-To: Your message of Mon, 01 Feb 93 16:04:39 -0800. <9302020004.AA29771@apple.com> Date: Mon, 01 Feb 93 20:59:43 EST From: mkc@Graphics.Cornell.edu Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >And with that, I'll go crawl back into the woodwork, since I don't believe >in talking to brick walls. It was a valient effort and I applaud it, but I have to agree that trying to make a point with Tasos is like talking to a brick wall. He has his own vision of how things should be and, well, if the world doesn't conform to that vision, then I guess the hell with them. Unfortunately for the world, some list managers insist on inflicting Tasos's software on their users and the users have no choice in the matter. -Mitch Collinsworth mitch@graphics.cornell.edu From List-Managers-Owner Tue Feb 2 11:53:34 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA02052; Tue, 2 Feb 93 11:53:34 GMT Received: from urmel.informatik.rwth-aachen.de by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA02045; Tue, 2 Feb 93 03:53:25 PST Received: from kaa (kaa.Informatik.RWTH-Aachen.DE) by urmel.informatik.rwth-aachen.de (4.1/urmel-MX.45) id AA07931; Tue, 2 Feb 93 12:53:02 +0100 Received: by kaa (4.1/POOL.3) id AA22340; Tue, 2 Feb 93 12:52:27 +0100 Message-Id: <9302021152.AA22340@kaa> From: berg@pool.informatik.rwth-aachen.de (Stephen R. van den Berg) Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1993 12:52:25 +0100 In-Reply-To: Brent Chapman's message as of 1993 Feb 1 Mon 16:38. <9302020039.AA17042@mycroft.GreatCircle.COM> To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Header fields to change or add before distributing Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Brent Chapman wrote: >berg@pool.informatik.rwth-aachen.de (Stephen R. van den Berg) writes: ># Bounces for "bulk" mail are only not generated if someone were so stupid as ># to assign to bulk a precedence value lower than "0" (as far as I know, noone ># has done this). >Nice theory, but wrong. Here's the relevant excerpt from the sample >sendmail.cf file included with the 5.67 release: > Pfirst-class=0 > Pspecial-delivery=100 > Pbulk=-60 > Pjunk=-100 >The default sendmail.cf file shipped by many vendors (Sun is a notable >exception) is usually very closely related to the sample .cf file >provided by Berkeley in the Sendmail distribution. This means that >setting "Pbulk" to a negative number is the norm, rather than the >exception. So much for that nice convention. Thanks for the enlightenment. I guess, in that case, we have to `invent' our own Precedence value for mailinglist-mail. I don't know about the rest of you list-software-writers, but, I'm going to stick a "Precedence: list" on every outgoing mail from the mailinglist. It would be nice if this became a defacto-standard. Or would anyone have some serious objections to such practice (or better ideas for that matter)? -- Sincerely, berg@pool.informatik.rwth-aachen.de Stephen R. van den Berg (AKA BuGless). berg@physik.tu-muenchen.de "Good moaning!" From List-Managers-Owner Tue Feb 2 19:54:34 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA03591; Tue, 2 Feb 93 19:54:34 GMT Received: from cs-mail.bu.edu by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA03584; Tue, 2 Feb 93 11:54:27 PST Received: from CS.BU.EDU by cs-mail.bu.edu (5.61+++/SMI-4.0.3) id AA23811; Tue, 2 Feb 93 14:54:24 -0500 From: tasos@cs.bu.edu (Anastasios Kotsikonas) Received: by cs.bu.edu (5.61+++/Spike-2.0) id AA20067; Tue, 2 Feb 93 14:54:24 -0500 Date: Tue, 2 Feb 93 14:54:24 -0500 Message-Id: <9302021954.AA20067@cs.bu.edu> To: chk@alias.com, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: UNIX listserv Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk The "brick wall" has decided to make the following alterations to UNIX ListServer (after consulting with the lawyer at work): - Remove the Copyright (c) from the X-Listserv_Version line. - Echo the copyright on system start up referencing the FAR and DFAR - Put the the Governement warning about the FAR and DFAR in the source code. This will be done in the upcoming version 6.0 and sites running previous versions will not be allowed to make those changes, i.e. they are forced to upgrade and wait till the release of 6.0. I hope this pleases everyone and is in accordance with everyone's views on copyright issues. Tasos From List-Managers-Owner Tue Feb 2 20:10:33 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA03634; Tue, 2 Feb 93 20:10:33 GMT Received: from CORNELLC.cit.cornell.edu by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA03627; Tue, 2 Feb 93 12:10:18 PST Received: from rex.Graphics.Cornell.edu by CORNELLC.cit.cornell.edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with TCP; Tue, 02 Feb 93 15:09:09 EST Received: by rex.Graphics.Cornell.edu (5.57/Ultrix3.0-C) id AA06395; Tue, 2 Feb 93 15:09:40 -0500 Message-Id: <9302022009.AA06395@rex.Graphics.Cornell.edu> To: tasos@cs.bu.edu (Anastasios Kotsikonas) Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM, mkc@Graphics.Cornell.edu Subject: Re: UNIX listserv In-Reply-To: Your message of Tue, 02 Feb 93 14:54:24 -0500. <9302021954.AA20067@cs.bu.edu> Date: Tue, 02 Feb 93 15:09:39 EST From: mkc@Graphics.Cornell.edu Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >The "brick wall" has decided to make the following alterations to UNIX >ListServer (after consulting with the lawyer at work): I for one would like to publicly say thank you for being responsive to this suggestion/complaint from the users of your software. It may or may not mean I have any chance of getting action on the complaint I previously brought to your attention, but it shows me that maybe there is hope yet. Thank you! -Mitch Collinsworth mitch@graphics.cornell.edu From List-Managers-Owner Tue Feb 2 21:34:48 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA03909; Tue, 2 Feb 93 21:34:48 GMT Received: from grasp1.univ-lyon1.fr by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA03902; Tue, 2 Feb 93 13:34:39 PST Received: by grasp1.univ-lyon1.fr (5.67a8/IDA-1.5f) via Rocad id AA15182; Tue, 2 Feb 1993 22:35:02 +0100 Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1993 22:35:02 +0100 From: Christophe Wolfhugel Message-Id: <199302022135.AA15182@grasp1.univ-lyon1.fr> To: berg@pool.informatik.rwth-aachen.de Subject: Re: Header fields to change or add before distributing Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk berg@pool.informatik.rwth-aachen.de: > "Precedence: list" With list=0 ? Then it's just regular mail. I guess the entire Precedence stuff would have to be modified in order to allow real low-priority mail with bounces being generated. I also just checked the documentation. With sendmail pri = size - class * z + nrcpt * y (y = 1000 z = 1800). So anyway for lists there are generally many recipients which makes pri rapidly growing and handled after usual mail but still before junk (100 * 1800). Chris From List-Managers-Owner Tue Feb 2 21:35:56 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA03931; Tue, 2 Feb 93 21:35:56 GMT Received: from yonge.csri.toronto.edu by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA03924; Tue, 2 Feb 93 13:35:47 PST Received: from alias by yonge.csri.toronto.edu with UUCP id <14419>; Tue, 2 Feb 1993 16:36:00 -0500 Received: from dino.alias.com by barney.alias.com with SMTP id AA12063 (5.65a/IDA-1.4.2 for tasos@cs.bu.edu); Tue, 2 Feb 93 16:14:31 -0500 Received: by dino.alias.com id AA05028 (5.65a/IDA-1.4.2 for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM); Tue, 2 Feb 93 16:14:29 -0500 From: chk@alias.com (C. Harald Koch) Message-Id: <9302022114.AA05028@dino.alias.com> Subject: Re: UNIX listserv To: tasos@cs.bu.edu (Anastasios Kotsikonas) Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1993 16:14:28 -0500 Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: <9302021954.AA20067@cs.bu.edu> from "Anastasios Kotsikonas" at Feb 2, 93 02:54:24 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL8] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 946 Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >The "brick wall" has decided ... Hmm. I don't agree with the "brick wall" comment; I understand that it can be difficult to understand and accept what another individual is trying to say, *especially* in electronic mail (where visual and auditory cues are absent). > I hope this pleases everyone and is in accordance with everyone's views on > copyright issues. I would like to (publically) thank you for making these changes. I appreciate that you listened to an opposing point-of-view, especially one that was not originally expressed well. I'll encourage the managers of lists that I'm on to upgrade to 6.0. Thanks! -- Main's Law: For every | C. Harald Koch Alias Research, Inc. Toronto, ON action, there is an equal | chk@alias.com (work-related mail) and opposite goverment | chk@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (permanent address) program. | VE3TLA@VE3OY.#SCON.ON.CA.NA (AMPRNet) From List-Managers-Owner Tue Feb 2 21:59:47 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA04118; Tue, 2 Feb 93 21:59:47 GMT Received: from localhost by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA04110; Tue, 2 Feb 93 13:59:43 PST Message-Id: <9302022159.AA04110@mycroft.GreatCircle.COM> To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Header fields to change or add before distributing In-Reply-To: Your message of Tue, 2 Feb 1993 22:35:02 +0100 Date: Tue, 02 Feb 93 13:59:42 -0800 From: Brent Chapman Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Christophe Wolfhugel writes: # berg@pool.informatik.rwth-aachen.de: # > "Precedence: list" # # With list=0 ? Then it's just regular mail. I guess the entire # Precedence stuff would have to be modified in order to allow real # low-priority mail with bounces being generated. What's the real use of the Precedence: header? My own major reason for using it is so that I don't get answers back from "vacation" programs. Unfortunately, "vacation" only recognizes "bulk" and "junk" entries in order to suppress responses. Whoever made both "bulk" and "junk" have negative values in the Berkeley sample sendmail.cf file really did us a disservice, but it's too late to do anything about it now. -Brent -- Brent Chapman Great Circle Associates Brent@GreatCircle.COM 1057 West Dana Street +1 415 962 0841 Mountain View, CA 94041 From List-Managers-Owner Tue Feb 2 22:39:16 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA04445; Tue, 2 Feb 93 22:39:16 GMT Received: from deepthought.cs.utexas.edu by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA04437; Tue, 2 Feb 93 14:39:08 PST Received: from im4u.cs.utexas.edu by deepthought.cs.utexas.edu (5.64/1.2/relay) with SMTP id AA08697; Tue, 2 Feb 93 16:39:57 -0600 Received: from chinaca by im4u.cs.utexas.edu (5.64/1.11/uucp) with UUCP id AA04893; Tue, 2 Feb 93 16:39:31 -0600 Received: originated by chinacat.unicom.com (3.1.28.1) id m0nJWG2-0002TSC; Tue, 2 Feb 93 16:38 CST Message-Id: From: chip@chinacat.unicom.com (Chip Rosenthal) Subject: Re: Header fields to change or add before distributing To: brent@GreatCircle.COM (Brent Chapman) Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1993 16:38:18 -0600 (CST) Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: <9302022159.AA04110@mycroft.GreatCircle.COM> from "Brent Chapman" at Feb 2, 93 01:59:42 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL21] Content-Type: text Content-Length: 489 Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Brent Chapman writes: > What's the real use of the Precedence: header? With smail3.1 it is configurable. You can make routing and transport decisions based upon the message precedence. For example, I use some higher speed uucp connections (read: expensive, direct, long distance calls) for high precedence messages. -- Chip Rosenthal 512-482-8260 | Now I only use my gun whenever kindness Unicom Systems Development | fails. - Robert Earl Keen, Jr. | From List-Managers-Owner Wed Feb 3 14:34:14 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA06381; Wed, 3 Feb 93 14:34:14 GMT Received: from yonge.csri.toronto.edu by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA06372; Wed, 3 Feb 93 06:33:52 PST Received: from alias by yonge.csri.toronto.edu with UUCP id <14422>; Wed, 3 Feb 1993 09:34:05 -0500 Received: from dino.alias.com by barney.alias.com with SMTP id AA29546 (5.65a/IDA-1.4.2 for brent@GreatCircle.COM); Wed, 3 Feb 93 09:22:28 -0500 Received: by dino.alias.com id AA22982 (5.65a/IDA-1.4.2 for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM); Wed, 3 Feb 93 09:22:26 -0500 Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1993 09:22:26 -0500 From: mandrews@alias.com (Mark Andrews) Message-Id: <9302031422.AA22982@dino.alias.com> To: Brent Chapman , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Header fields to change or add before distributing Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >What's the real use of the Precedence: header? My own major reason >for using it is so that I don't get answers back from "vacation" >programs. Unfortunately, "vacation" only recognizes "bulk" and >"junk" entries in order to suppress responses. > >Whoever made both "bulk" and "junk" have negative values in the >Berkeley sample sendmail.cf file really did us a disservice, but it's >too late to do anything about it now. Is it really too late? I was under the impression that Eric Allman was updating/rewriting sendmail at the current time. Granted it is alpha or beta (version 6.12 is the last version I heard of), but if you have concerns or requests, you might want to bring them up with Eric at this time. Mark From List-Managers-Owner Wed Feb 3 15:11:23 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA06508; Wed, 3 Feb 93 15:11:23 GMT Received: from urmel.informatik.rwth-aachen.de ([137.226.144.3]) by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA06501; Wed, 3 Feb 93 07:11:03 PST Received: from kaa (kaa.Informatik.RWTH-Aachen.DE) by urmel.informatik.rwth-aachen.de (4.1/urmel-MX.45) id AA14235; Wed, 3 Feb 93 16:10:52 +0100 Received: by kaa (4.1/POOL.3) id AA27516; Wed, 3 Feb 93 16:10:15 +0100 Message-Id: <9302031510.AA27516@kaa> From: berg@pool.informatik.rwth-aachen.de (Stephen R. van den Berg) Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1993 16:10:14 +0100 In-Reply-To: Mark Andrews's message as of 1993 Feb 3 Wed 9:22. <9302031422.AA22982@dino.alias.com> To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Header fields to change or add before distributing Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Mark Andrews wrote: >>What's the real use of the Precedence: header? My own major reason >>for using it is so that I don't get answers back from "vacation" >>programs. Unfortunately, "vacation" only recognizes "bulk" and >>"junk" entries in order to suppress responses. >>Whoever made both "bulk" and "junk" have negative values in the >>Berkeley sample sendmail.cf file really did us a disservice, but it's >>too late to do anything about it now. >Is it really too late? I was under the impression that Eric Allman was >updating/rewriting sendmail at the current time. Granted it is alpha >or beta (version 6.12 is the last version I heard of), but if you have >concerns or requests, you might want to bring them up with Eric at >this time. It is too late. You can't use the "Precedence: bulk" classification for mailinglist mail now; far too many sendmails are currently using the old defaults, which give "bulk" a negative value. The only way to go would be to invent a new Precedence classification so that: - the old sendmail.cf files classify this with a precedence value of "0" (since it is undefined). - any new sendmail.cf which takes the new classification into account can provide a more sophisticated value (but, god forbid, not a negative value). I'd like to propose "Precedence: list" for mailinglist mail. The only problem will be the "vacation"-type programs. They have to be updated to check for the new precedence classification. Does anybody happen to have the mail address of Eric Allman handy? -- Sincerely, berg@pool.informatik.rwth-aachen.de Stephen R. van den Berg (AKA BuGless). berg@physik.tu-muenchen.de "Listen very carefully, I shall only say this once." From List-Managers-Owner Wed Feb 3 15:56:26 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA06610; Wed, 3 Feb 93 15:56:26 GMT Received: from antares.mcs.anl.gov by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA06602; Wed, 3 Feb 93 07:56:18 PST Received: from skeeve.mcs.anl.gov by antares.mcs.anl.gov (4.1/SMI-GAR) id AA01792; Wed, 3 Feb 93 09:56:48 CST Received: by skeeve.mcs.anl.gov (4.1/GeneV4) id AA10565; Wed, 3 Feb 93 09:56:46 CST Message-Id: <9302031556.AA10565@skeeve.mcs.anl.gov> To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Header fields to change or add before distributing In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 03 Feb 93 09:22:26 EST." <9302031422.AA22982@dino.alias.com> Date: Wed, 03 Feb 93 09:56:46 CST From: Gene Rackow Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Is it really to late, and/or do we really care? Call me crazy and/or mired in some of the old ways, but I think it's time for a reality check... What would be the problem IF we just used bulk as a precedence on most of the mailings, then in a once-a-month/quarter/??? time frame posted a administration message to the list without the precedence line and did list clean-up on what you get back. The amount of work that goes into keeping a medium->big list happy is not trivial. Having the norm be that the list-admin does not get back 20/200/???? messages a day in bounces would be prefered. Then as he sees fit, and or gets a little additional time, list maint can occur. A problem in adding a new precedence is all the lousy little utilities that will need to be updated to understand it. This will take a LONG time to make happen. For those of you that want to do bleeding edge, then by all means create a new precedence, but don't expect it to do very much good for 3 to 5 years. It takes most vendors a couple of years to pass changes through their OS/QA-QC groups. Then the tools have to go to customers and be implemented, etc. Many more sites now run out of the box vendor distributions than before. The vast majority have probably never heard of smail, or sendmail-v6.X or any of the other versions either. We also have to look at the scale of the changes proposed. Your not talking 100 or 1000 machines here, but 10's or 100's of THOUSANDS. Many machines are NOT on software support contracts and/or were made by vendors that have gone to the great bit bucket of silicon valley. We are also now looking at the explosion of new machines in the PC/MAC arena's that have their own ways of doing things. One of the problems that I see is getting all of the "status" messages back from uucp relay sites. "Not able to contact site ????? for XX hours, no need to do anything at this time", is real annoying. Then even more annoying in another day, and/or two and three getting XX+24 the same message. Many of those sites have been asked repeatedly to not send the existing bulk or junk precedence message status back, but... --Gene From List-Managers-Owner Fri Feb 5 03:20:42 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA14056; Fri, 5 Feb 93 03:20:42 GMT Received: from SERVER.uwindsor.ca by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA14049; Thu, 4 Feb 93 19:20:33 PST Received: by SERVER.uwindsor.ca (920330.SGI/920502.SGI.AUTO) for List-Managers@Greatcircle.com id AA08605; Thu, 4 Feb 93 22:20:25 -0500 Message-Id: <9302050320.AA08605@SERVER.uwindsor.ca> Subject: Re: UNIX listserv To: (List managers) Date: Thu, 4 Feb 93 22:20:21 EST In-Reply-To: <9302022114.AA05028@dino.alias.com>; from "C. Harald Koch" at Feb 2, 93 4:14 pm From: Scott Ophof X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11] Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Tue, 2 Feb 1993 16:14:28 -0500 C. Harald Koch said: ] >The "brick wall" has decided ... ] Hmm. I don't agree with the "brick wall" comment; Neither do I. But I do like Tasos' sense of humour. ;-) ] I understand that it can ] be difficult to understand and accept what another individual is trying to ] say, *especially* in electronic mail (where visual and auditory cues are ] absent). Right. Knowing exactly what one wants to express, seemingly doing so, and then doing double-takes at how some of the reactions, ie: "How could what I said *ever* be interpreted *that* way???" %-| ] > I hope this pleases everyone and is in accordance with everyone's views on ] > copyright issues. ] I would like to (publically) thank you for making these changes. I appreciate ] that you listened to an opposing point-of-view, especially one that was not ] originally expressed well. Another vote of thanks, Tasos! Please keep up the effort to emulate the LISTSERV concept as closely as possible. It's worth it, imho. ] I'll encourage the managers of lists that I'm on to upgrade to 6.0. Great, Harald! Any other takers? :-) But.. Seems there are still people who feel "Listserver" is still too close to "Listserv". Regards all! $$\ F. Scott Ophof ---------------------------> I speak *only* for *myself* <----- My credo: Computers exist for OUR benefit, NEVER vice-versa. From List-Managers-Owner Fri Feb 5 15:09:55 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA17645; Fri, 5 Feb 93 15:09:55 GMT Received: from urmel.informatik.rwth-aachen.de by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA17638; Fri, 5 Feb 93 07:09:36 PST Received: from kaa (kaa.Informatik.RWTH-Aachen.DE) by urmel.informatik.rwth-aachen.de (4.1/urmel-MX.45) id AA11856; Fri, 5 Feb 93 16:09:23 +0100 Received: by kaa (4.1/POOL.3) id AA06255; Fri, 5 Feb 93 16:08:41 +0100 Message-Id: <9302051508.AA06255@kaa> From: berg@pool.informatik.rwth-aachen.de (Stephen R. van den Berg) Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1993 16:08:40 +0100 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: procmail v2.80 with extended mailinglist management Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Procmail v2.80 has been posted to comp.sources.misc. Before installing it you might want to check comp.sources.bugs for a one-line patch fixing some non-fatal (but embarrassing) installation bug. It includes a complete mailinglist management package. For your information I listed the mailinglist's main features below: + The overseeable management of an arbitrary number of mailinglists + Convenient and simple creation of new mailinglists + Convenient and simple removal of existing mailinglists + Fully automated subscription/unsubscription/help-request processing (no operator intervention needed) + Enough intelligence to overcome the stupidity of some subscribers (will direct subscribe and unsubscribe requests away from the regular list and automatically onto the -request address) + No hardwired format for (un)subscribe requests (i.e. new subscribers need not be educated, unsubscribing users do not need to remember any particular syntax) + Submissions can be limited to subscribers only + The fully automated subscription mechanism allows for a reject list of unwanted subscribers + Joint management of several mailinglists possible (through hardlinked rcfiles) + Customisation per mailinglist or mailinglist group possible (simply remove or create the desired hardlinks) + A listmaintainer can be assigned per list; miscellaneous requests that couldn't be handled by the list automatically are then forwarded to his mail address (instead of being accumulated in a file) + Allows for remote maintenance of any mailinglist by a listmaintainer + Integrated archiving service + Integrated diagnostic aid to give hints to the maintainer about possible problems + *Intelligent* autoremoval of addresses from the list that cause too many bounces -- Sincerely, berg@pool.informatik.rwth-aachen.de Stephen R. van den Berg (AKA BuGless). berg@physik.tu-muenchen.de He did a quarter of the work in *half* the time! From List-Managers-Owner Fri Feb 5 17:43:51 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA17936; Fri, 5 Feb 93 17:43:51 GMT Received: from cs-mail.bu.edu by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA17929; Fri, 5 Feb 93 09:43:43 PST Received: from CS.BU.EDU by cs-mail.bu.edu (5.61+++/SMI-4.0.3) id AA05098; Fri, 5 Feb 93 12:44:00 -0500 From: tasos@cs.bu.edu (Anastasios Kotsikonas) Received: by cs.bu.edu (5.61+++/Spike-2.0) id AA09454; Fri, 5 Feb 93 12:43:59 -0500 Date: Fri, 5 Feb 93 12:43:59 -0500 Message-Id: <9302051743.AA09454@cs.bu.edu> To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: consensus needed for automatic error generation Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk This mostly affects developers of automated list management software, but of course discussion is open to everyone. In an effort to cut down on mail loop generation I would like to see all such software out there using the same way of flagging an automatic error-reply for example, a string inthe Subject: line. For example, when a ser issues some invalid request, the system puts something like this in the subject line: Subject: Error Condition Re: What I am looking for is an agreement on what should go before . On the receiving side the mailer-daemon instead of bouncing (if this is about to happen for whatever the reason) it will check for this string and forward the entire message to the local postmaster. If we are able to agree, we could then force the rest of the "world" to abide by this rule (some may say: "yeah, keep dreaming"). Comments? Tasos From List-Managers-Owner Sat Feb 6 06:44:49 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA18845; Sat, 6 Feb 93 06:44:49 GMT Received: from SERVER.uwindsor.ca by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA18838; Fri, 5 Feb 93 22:44:41 PST Received: by SERVER.uwindsor.ca (920330.SGI/920502.SGI.AUTO) for List-Managers@Greatcircle.com id AA03638; Sat, 6 Feb 93 01:44:29 -0500 Message-Id: <9302060644.AA03638@SERVER.uwindsor.ca> Subject: Re: consensus needed for automatic error generation To: (List managers) Date: Sat, 6 Feb 93 1:44:25 EST In-Reply-To: <9302051743.AA09454@cs.bu.edu>; from "Anastasios Kotsikonas" at Feb 5, 93 12:43 pm From: Scott Ophof X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11] Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Fri, 5 Feb 93 12:43:59 -0500 Anastasios Kotsikonas said: ] This mostly affects developers of automated list management software, but ] of course discussion is open to everyone. ] In an effort to cut down on mail loop generation I would like to see all ] such software out there using the same way of flagging an automatic ] error-reply for example, a string inthe Subject: line. ] For example, when a ser issues some invalid request, the system puts ] something like this in the subject line: ] Subject: Error Condition Re: ] ... ] Comments? Questions: - Does LISTSERV already have a solution for this problem? (It already being around for quite a while) - If yes, is it a useable solution in the Unix/Internet world? Regards. $$\ F. Scott Ophof ---------------------------> I speak *only* for *myself* <----- My credo: Computers exist for OUR benefit, NEVER vice-versa. From List-Managers-Owner Sat Feb 6 06:46:59 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA18866; Sat, 6 Feb 93 06:46:59 GMT Received: from SERVER.uwindsor.ca by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA18859; Fri, 5 Feb 93 22:46:51 PST Received: by SERVER.uwindsor.ca (920330.SGI/920502.SGI.AUTO) for List-Managers@Greatcircle.com id AA03897; Sat, 6 Feb 93 01:47:19 -0500 Message-Id: <9302060647.AA03897@SERVER.uwindsor.ca> Subject: Re: procmail v2.80 with extended mailinglist management To: (List managers) Date: Sat, 6 Feb 93 1:47:15 EST In-Reply-To: <9302051508.AA06255@kaa>; from "Stephen R. van den Berg" at Feb 5, 93 4:08 pm From: Scott Ophof X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11] Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Fri, 5 Feb 1993 16:08:40 +0100 Stephen R. van den Berg said: ] Procmail v2.80 has been posted to comp.sources.misc. Before installing ] ... ] + Enough intelligence to overcome the stupidity of some subscribers ========= I very much resent the use of the underlined word. Users may not have the necessary knowledge, but that doesn't make them stupid. ] (will direct subscribe and unsubscribe requests away from the ] regular list and automatically onto the -request address) So what happens if I hit the wrong key (so frustratingly *EASY* with most Unix software being based on single-key commands!) and my item with as sole line in the body (or the first line): unsubscribe list-name meant for a friend goes to a list managed by Procmail? Do I get unsubscribed? I most certainly hope NOT... :-( This kind of thing was discussed two years ago (in lists relating to support of LISTSERV and LISTEARN), and I believe the consensus was to leave it as-is, because there was no easy way to solve it... ] + No hardwired format for (un)subscribe requests (i.e. new subscribers ] need not be educated, unsubscribing users do not need to remember ] any particular syntax) WOW! How do you manage to do this? The rest looks very nice (to this layman user.. ;-) ). Congrats! ] He did a quarter of the work in *half* the time! Um.. So production went *up*? ;-) Regards. $$\ F. Scott Ophof ---------------------------> I speak *only* for *myself* <----- My credo: Computers exist for OUR benefit, NEVER vice-versa. From List-Managers-Owner Sat Feb 6 08:50:18 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA18982; Sat, 6 Feb 93 08:50:18 GMT Received: from relay2.UU.NET by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA18975; Sat, 6 Feb 93 00:50:11 PST Received: from uunet.uu.net (via LOCALHOST.UU.NET) by relay2.UU.NET with SMTP (5.61/UUNET-internet-primary) id AA23516; Sat, 6 Feb 93 03:50:14 -0500 Received: from eiffel.UUCP by uunet.uu.net with UUCP/RMAIL (queueing-rmail) id 034958.29987; Sat, 6 Feb 1993 03:49:58 EST Received: from lyon.eiffel.com by glasgow.eiffel.com (4.1/SMI-4.0) id AA08140; Fri, 5 Feb 93 15:50:56 PST Received: by lyon.eiffel.com (5.61/1.34) id AA22434; Fri, 5 Feb 93 15:53:24 -0800 To: berg@pool.informatik.rwth-aachen.de (Stephen R. van den Berg) Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: procmail v2.80 with extended mailinglist management In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 05 Feb 93 16:08:40 +0100." <9302051508.AA06255@kaa> X-Mailer: MH [version 6.7.2] Organization: Interactive Software Engineering, Santa Barbara CA Date: Fri, 05 Feb 93 15:53:23 PST Message-Id: <22432.728956403@lyon.eiffel.com> From: Raphael Manfredi Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Quoting Stephen R. van den Berg: > Procmail v2.80 has been posted to comp.sources.misc. Before installing > it you might want to check comp.sources.bugs for a one-line patch fixing > some non-fatal (but embarrassing) installation bug. > > It includes a complete mailinglist management package. For your information > I listed the mailinglist's main features below: > > [impressive list of features removed] Well, I would like to have a pure technical comparaison between procmail2.80 and Majordomo. I retrieved procmail from comp.sources.misc, and it appears the whole system is written on the base of shell scripts and procmail "recipe" files. Majordomo on the contrary is written mainly in Perl. I do not maintain any mailing list (yet) but will do so in the near future. Therefore, I would like to choose the appropriate management software. Would such a comparaison be within the scope of this list? -- Raphael Manfredi Interactive Software Engineering Inc. 270 Storke Road, Suite #7 / Tel +1 (805) 685-1006 \ Goleta, California 93117, USA \ Fax +1 (805) 685-6869 / From List-Managers-Owner Sun Feb 7 18:25:52 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA20580; Sun, 7 Feb 93 18:25:52 GMT Received: from cs-mail.bu.edu by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA20573; Sun, 7 Feb 93 10:25:46 PST Received: from CS.BU.EDU by cs-mail.bu.edu (5.61+++/SMI-4.0.3) id AA09982; Sun, 7 Feb 93 13:25:40 -0500 From: tasos@cs.bu.edu (Anastasios Kotsikonas) Received: by cs.bu.edu (5.61+++/Spike-2.0) id AA19437; Sun, 7 Feb 93 13:25:40 -0500 Date: Sun, 7 Feb 93 13:25:40 -0500 Message-Id: <9302071825.AA19437@cs.bu.edu> To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: pattent alert Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >From ACM's "Communications of the ACM", January 1993, Volume 36, Number 1, article entitled "Setting the record straight on patents", page 17: "In terms of what is patentable and novel, based on what the Patent Office is allowing now, the threshold is quite low. Recently the Patent Office awarded a patent to the Air Force for nothing more than the difference in the source code between two versions of an atmospheric propagation code that has been in the public domain for over 15 years." Talking about governement practices two weeks ago..... Tasos From List-Managers-Owner Mon Feb 8 04:51:58 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA21181; Mon, 8 Feb 93 04:51:58 GMT Received: from localhost by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA21173; Sun, 7 Feb 93 20:51:53 PST Message-Id: <9302080451.AA21173@mycroft.GreatCircle.COM> To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: procmail v2.80 with extended mailinglist management In-Reply-To: Your message of Fri, 05 Feb 93 15:53:23 PST Date: Sun, 07 Feb 93 20:51:52 -0800 From: Brent Chapman Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk # Well, I would like to have a pure technical comparaison between procmail2.80 # and Majordomo. # # Would such a comparaison be within the scope of this list? Yes. I'm more than a little curious about this myself. I wrote Majordomo to fill my own needs; I've been pleasantly surprised that others have found it useful as well. -Brent -- Brent Chapman Great Circle Associates Brent@GreatCircle.COM 1057 West Dana Street +1 415 962 0841 Mountain View, CA 94041 From List-Managers-Owner Mon Feb 8 16:58:18 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA22259; Mon, 8 Feb 93 16:58:18 GMT Received: from cs.columbia.edu by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA22252; Mon, 8 Feb 93 08:57:57 PST Received: from tiemann.cs.columbia.edu by cs.columbia.edu (5.65c/0.6/jba+ad) with SMTP id AA16816; Mon, 8 Feb 1993 11:58:05 -0500 Received: by tiemann.cs.columbia.edu (4.1/SMI-4.1+) id AA18547; Mon, 8 Feb 93 12:01:52 EST Date: Mon, 8 Feb 93 12:01:52 EST From: dupuy@tiemann.cs.columbia.edu (Alexander Dupuy) Message-Id: <9302081701.AA18547@tiemann.cs.columbia.edu> To: tasos@cs.bu.edu In-Reply-To: Anastasios Kotsikonas's message of Sun, 7 Feb 93 13:25:40 -0500 <9302071825.AA19437@cs.bu.edu> Subject: patent alert Reply-To: dupuy@cs.columbia.edu Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I share your concern about the dangers of patenting software, and to translate that concern into action, I have been a member of the League for Programming Freedom (LPF) for several years now. The League is an organization of programmers and others who are concerned about intellectual property laws which will restrict or limit our ability to write our own programs; currently these are software patents and "look and feel" (or interface) copyrights. The League is not opposed to software copyrights in general, only to the questionable extension of copyright protection to software interfaces, since they prevent programmers from making their own programs compatible with other (possibly de facto industry standard) programs. Imagine if someone were to claim a copyright on the LISTSERV command set... In any case, I invite anyone who is interested in finding out more about the LPF to contact me or the League directly for more information. Finally, despite my interest in this subject, I feel it is a bit off-topic for this mailing list, so I've BCC'd the list in a feeble attempt to prevent auto-replies from going to the list (depending on what MajorDomo does with the headers, this is unlikely to work :-) and encourage anyone who is interested in discussing these issues to take it off line and simply send mail to the interested parties directly. @alex -- inet: dupuy@cs.columbia.edu Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- write to lpf@uunet.uu.net From List-Managers-Owner Mon Feb 8 21:48:01 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA23434; Mon, 8 Feb 93 21:48:01 GMT Received: from relay1.UU.NET by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA23425; Mon, 8 Feb 93 13:47:51 PST Received: from uunet.uu.net (via LOCALHOST.UU.NET) by relay1.UU.NET with SMTP (5.61/UUNET-internet-primary) id AA06346; Mon, 8 Feb 93 16:48:12 -0500 Received: from eiffel.UUCP by uunet.uu.net with UUCP/RMAIL (queueing-rmail) id 164529.3252; Mon, 8 Feb 1993 16:45:29 EST Received: from lyon.eiffel.com by glasgow.eiffel.com (4.1/SMI-4.0) id AA10688; Mon, 8 Feb 93 08:56:02 PST Received: by lyon.eiffel.com (5.61/1.34) id AA12008; Mon, 8 Feb 93 08:58:33 -0800 To: Brent Chapman Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: procmail v2.80 with extended mailinglist management In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 07 Feb 93 20:51:52 PST." <9302080451.AA21173@mycroft.GreatCircle.COM> X-Mailer: MH [version 6.7.2] Organization: Interactive Software Engineering, Santa Barbara CA Date: Mon, 08 Feb 93 08:58:32 PST Message-Id: <12006.729190712@lyon.eiffel.com> From: Raphael Manfredi Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Quoting Brent Chapman: ram>Well, I would like to have a pure technical comparaison between procmail2.80 ram>and Majordomo. ram> ram>Would such a comparaison be within the scope of this list? > > Yes. I'm more than a little curious about this myself. I wrote > Majordomo to fill my own needs; I've been pleasantly surprised that > others have found it useful as well. Ok, I'm going to review those two programs, as well as "Tasos"'s listserver program if I can get my hands on it. Comparaison will be purely technical, and should cover documentation, source code quality, features, etc... If you use either of these three programs (and provided you are not the author!), feel free to contact me if you have a technical point to make. I'll consider your point and, if you allow it, I'll include your comments in my report. Give me two weeks to complete it... Please be sure to focus on the *technical* side only. -- Raphael Manfredi Interactive Software Engineering Inc. 270 Storke Road, Suite #7 / Tel +1 (805) 685-1006 \ Goleta, California 93117, USA \ Fax +1 (805) 685-6869 / From List-Managers-Owner Tue Feb 16 22:16:24 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA11432; Tue, 16 Feb 93 22:16:24 GMT Received: from localhost by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA11423; Tue, 16 Feb 93 14:16:18 PST Message-Id: <9302162216.AA11423@mycroft.GreatCircle.COM> To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Header fields to change or add before distributing In-Reply-To: Your message of Wed, 03 Feb 93 09:56:46 CST Date: Tue, 16 Feb 93 14:16:17 -0800 From: Brent Chapman Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk [ I know this is an old discussion, but I haven't had a chance to catch up on email in about 3 weeks. Since I'm home sick today, that's what I'm spending the afternoon doing. -Brent ] Gene Rackow writes: # Is it really to late, and/or do we really care? Call me crazy and/or # mired in some of the old ways, but I think it's time for a reality check... # # What would be the problem IF we just used bulk as a precedence # on most of the mailings, then in a once-a-month/quarter/??? time # frame posted a administration message to the list without # the precedence line and did list clean-up on what you get back. # The amount of work that goes into keeping a medium->big list happy # is not trivial. Having the norm be that the list-admin # does not get back 20/200/???? messages a day in bounces would # be prefered. Then as he sees fit, and or gets a little additional # time, list maint can occur. That's essentially what I do for all the lists that I run out of GreatCircle.COM (Firewalls, Firewalls-Digest, List-Managers, List-Managers-Digest, Majordomo-Users, Majordomo-Announce, etc.). When I forward something to the list by hand (usually something that was kicked out as suspicious by the administrivia filters, but is actually legitimate), I leave off the argument to my header-hacking program that adds the "Precedence: bulk" line. This happens once every month or three, and usually turns up a half dozen or so addresses (which ain't that many, considering that Firewalls has almost 800 subscribers) that have gone bad since the last time I did it. # One of the problems that I see is getting all of the "status" messages # back from uucp relay sites. "Not able to contact site ????? for XX hours, # no need to do anything at this time", is real annoying. Then even # more annoying in another day, and/or two and three getting XX+24 the # same message. Many of those sites have been asked repeatedly to not # send the existing bulk or junk precedence message status back, but... Yeah, those are annoying, but they _do_ serve a somewhat useful service. If I get a message back that says "haven't been able to talk to so-and-so for 3 days; will try for 30 days total", I bounce them from my list right then, not 30 days from now when the mail starts getting returned as undeliverable. If I wait 30 days until mail _really_ starts bouncing, then there's 30 days of stuff already in the queue that's going to be trickling in for the _next_ 30 days. -Brent -- Brent Chapman Great Circle Associates Brent@GreatCircle.COM 1057 West Dana Street +1 415 962 0841 Mountain View, CA 94041 From List-Managers-Owner Thu Feb 18 16:06:52 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA19817; Thu, 18 Feb 93 16:06:52 GMT Received: from antares.mcs.anl.gov by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA19810; Thu, 18 Feb 93 08:06:33 PST Received: from skeeve.mcs.anl.gov by antares.mcs.anl.gov with SMTP id AA17158 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for ); Thu, 18 Feb 1993 10:07:00 -0600 Received: by skeeve.mcs.anl.gov (4.1/GeneV4) id AA07966; Thu, 18 Feb 93 10:06:59 CST Message-Id: <9302181606.AA07966@skeeve.mcs.anl.gov> To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Mailing lists and Sales Creatures Date: Thu, 18 Feb 93 10:06:58 CST From: Gene Rackow Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I just had a "sales glossy" go across on of the mailing lists that I maintain. This caused a small flurry of activity of the "what is this crap doing here" variety. This kind of stuff is something we are going to have to deal with more and more. The preamble of the message was, quote: This announcement is brought to you via the Commercial Internet Exchange, CIX, which provides UNRESTRICTED traffic (subject to all applicable laws) across the internet. If you feel you have received this announcement in error or do not wish to receive similar annoucements in the future, please send e-mail to sales@magma.com and we will not send you any future announce- ments. I read this, in part, as though they are justifing their use of the network to send the message because they originated on CIX. They have no clue as to where their message may go from there... After talking to the person that sent the message, I go the distinct impression that I'd be seeing alot more of these kinds of messages since that is how the network salesoids are getting smaller companies to sign up for service. ie: "look at all of these (potential) customers you can now mail to without using stamps..." This person had the feeling that he was just the first of many salesmen at many new companies that are going to be doing this. My question is how do we go about educating these people to use descretion when sending out messages? The net and many mailing lists have survived for many years with some (un)written rules on "no commerical use" and netiquitte. Has anyone addressed this issue already? What kinds of things could we actually do? What kinds of canned messages might people have to respond to these types of intrusions? I kind of fear the day when some number of companies figure out that the sun-managers mailing list has a very good target audience for cruft they have to run on suns. Let the flailing commence... - --Gene From List-Managers-Owner Thu Feb 18 19:13:25 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA20292; Thu, 18 Feb 93 19:13:25 GMT Received: from d.ecc.engr.uky.edu by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA20285; Thu, 18 Feb 93 11:13:06 PST Received: from s.ecc.engr.uky.edu by d.ecc.engr.uky.edu (5.59/25-eef) id AA26524; Thu, 18 Feb 93 13:49:38 EST Received: by s.ecc.engr.uky.edu (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA23880; Thu, 18 Feb 93 14:04:22 EST Date: Thu, 18 Feb 93 14:04:22 EST From: morgan@engr.uky.edu (Wes Morgan) Message-Id: <9302181904.AA23880@s.ecc.engr.uky.edu> To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Mailing lists and Sales Creatures Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk [ receipt of sales hoohah on mailing list ] >I read this, in part, as though they are justifing their use of >the network to send the message because they originated on CIX. >They have no clue as to where their message may go from there... Hey, at least it said "if you don't want to see this, let us know". I once had to fight a virtual battle with a fel- low who couldn't understand why he couldn't use our email facilities to broadcast ads for his home business far and wide........ >My question is how do we go about educating these people to >use descretion when sending out messages? The net and many >mailing lists have survived for many years with some (un)written >rules on "no commerical use" and netiquitte. Has anyone addressed >this issue already? What kinds of things could we actually do? >What kinds of canned messages might people have to respond to >these types of intrusions? I kind of fear the day when some >number of companies figure out that the sun-managers mailing list >has a very good target audience for cruft they have to run on suns. I actually have a "no commercial stuff, please" form letter somewhere; it basically says something like "the members of this mailing list have decided, as a group, that unrequested sales material is not welcome. This is the *group's* decision, not the moderator's. Please do not send such material to this mailing list in the future." I'll probably add something like "If you continue to send unrequested commercial material to this list, you should stop and consider the fact that the members of this list frequently participate in purchasing deci- sions at their respective organizations; willful ignorance of their stated preference in this matter may result in a poor public image (and reduced sales) for your firm." Gotta hit 'em where they live......we could always circulate a "Mailing List Hall of Shame" and turn their name to mud through Listland....8) --Wes From List-Managers-Owner Thu Feb 18 20:48:25 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA20420; Thu, 18 Feb 93 20:48:25 GMT Received: from kaukau.comp.vuw.ac.nz by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA20413; Thu, 18 Feb 93 12:47:53 PST Received: from regent.comp.vuw.ac.nz by kaukau.comp.vuw.ac.nz with SMTP id for ; Fri, 19 Feb 1993 09:48:01 +1300 From: Andy Linton Received: by regent.comp.vuw.ac.nz with SMTP id ; Fri, 19 Feb 1993 08:49:11 +1300 Message-Id: <199302181949.AA15547@regent.comp.vuw.ac.nz> To: Gene Rackow Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Mailing lists and Sales Creatures X-Organization: Victoria University, PO Box 600, Wellington, NEW ZEALAND X-Phone: +64 4 495 5054 (Work) or +64 4 499 1819 (Home) X-Fax: +64 4 495 5232 X-Mailer: XMH/mh 6.8 Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1993 08:49:11 +1300 Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk In your message dated Thu, 18 Feb 1993 10:06:58 CST, you write: > > I just had a "sales glossy" go across on of the mailing lists that I > maintain. This caused a small flurry of activity of the "what is this I almost got this too but they sent it to a non-existant user here. It bounced and here's what happened: ------- Forwarded Message >From: Mailer-Daemon@magma.COM (Mail Delivery Subsystem) >To: >Date: Thu, 18 Feb 93 08:30:19 PST > > ----- Transcript of session follows ----- >mail: /var/spool/mail/magma: cannot append >mail: cannot open dead.letter >554 ,nancy,seidel,paul,ed,john@mrt... Service unavailable >421 mrtipc2: Host mrtipc2 is down, will keep trying for 3 days > > ----- Unsent message follows ----- >Return-Path: >Received: from kaukau.comp.vuw.ac.nz ([130.195.5.20]) by magma.COM (4.1/SMI-4 >.1) > id AA04104; Thu, 18 Feb 93 08:30:19 PST >Received: by kaukau.comp.vuw.ac.nz > id for magma@magma.COM; Fri, 19 Feb 1993 05:27:57 +1300 >Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1993 05:27:57 +1300 >Message-Id: <199302181627.AA02037@kaukau.comp.vuw.ac.nz> >From: postmaster@comp.vuw.ac.nz >To: magma@magma.COM >Subject: Undelivered mail to hp@comp.vuw.ac.nz >Precedence: bulk ----- Rest of message text deleted ----- I know I won't do business with morons who can't set up their mail system properly! (:-) From List-Managers-Owner Fri Feb 19 01:45:04 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA21242; Fri, 19 Feb 93 01:45:04 GMT Received: from uu7.psi.com by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA21230; Thu, 18 Feb 93 17:44:31 PST Received: by uu7.psi.com (5.65b/4.0.071791-PSI/PSINet) via UUCP; id AA26994 for ; Thu, 18 Feb 93 20:36:00 -0500 Date: Thu, 18 Feb 93 22:20:29 GMT From: rick@ssg.com (Rick Emerson) Received: by ssg.com (4.0/3.2.083191-System Support Group) id AA01412; Thu, 18 Feb 93 22:20:29 GMT Message-Id: <9302182220.AA01412@ssg.com> To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Mailing lists and Sales Creatures In-Reply-To: <9302181606.AA07966@skeeve.mcs.anl.gov> References: <9302181606.AA07966@skeeve.mcs.anl.gov> Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Gene Rackow writes: > > I just had a "sales glossy" go across on of the mailing lists that I > maintain. This caused a small flurry of activity of the "what is this > crap doing here" variety. This kind of stuff is something we are > going to have to deal with more and more. The preamble of the message > was, quote: > > This announcement is brought to you via the Commercial Internet > Exchange, CIX, which provides UNRESTRICTED traffic (subject to > all applicable laws) across the internet. If you feel you have > received this announcement in error or do not wish to receive > similar annoucements in the future, please send e-mail to > sales@magma.com and we will not send you any future announce- > ments. > > I read this, in part, as though they are justifing their use of > the network to send the message because they originated on CIX. > They have no clue as to where their message may go from there... One caveat: this is a known ploy in the snail mail junk mail world for building lists. No doubt some pond scum junk e-mailer will hit on this, too. > After talking to the person that sent the message, I go the > distinct impression that I'd be seeing alot more of these kinds > of messages since that is how the network salesoids are getting > smaller companies to sign up for service. ie: "look at all of > these (potential) customers you can now mail to without using > stamps..." This person had the feeling that he was just the > first of many salesmen at many new companies that are going to > be doing this. > > My question is how do we go about educating these people to > use descretion when sending out messages? The net and many > mailing lists have survived for many years with some (un)written > rules on "no commerical use" and netiquitte. Has anyone addressed > this issue already? What kinds of things could we actually do? > What kinds of canned messages might people have to respond to > these types of intrusions? I kind of fear the day when some > number of companies figure out that the sun-managers mailing list > has a very good target audience for cruft they have to run on suns. > > Let the flailing commence... > Gene, I think the best answer is to send back "your mail is unwelcome. To show you just how unwelcome, rest assured that I will not buy your product or service and I will urge anyone else who I know has received this message to boycott your product or service." I disconnected from one list that refused to discontinue support for one site that generated commercial messages that were virtually on a par with Ronco Vegomatics. Bottom line: vote with your wallet and vote with your feet. Rick | Richard B. Emerson | Replies may be sent to: | | System Support Group | rick@ssg.com | | 940 Delaware Avenue |-------------------------------------------------+ | Lansdale, PA 19446 USA | "When you ski, you dance with the mountain -- | | Voice: 215.855.1607 | and the mountain always leads." | From List-Managers-Owner Fri Feb 19 01:46:00 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA21257; Fri, 19 Feb 93 01:46:00 GMT Received: from lokkur.dexter.mi.us (dexter-gw.dexter.msen.com) by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA21231; Thu, 18 Feb 93 17:45:32 PST Received: by lokkur.dexter.mi.us (5.65c/IDA-1.2.8) id AA04125; Thu, 18 Feb 1993 20:43:46 -0500 From: Steve Simmons Message-Id: <199302190143.AA04125@lokkur.dexter.mi.us> Subject: Re: Mailing lists and Sales Creatures To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Thu, 18 Feb 1993 20:43:45 -0500 (EST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL11] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 661 Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >I just had a "sales glossy" go across on of the mailing lists that I >maintain. This caused a small flurry of activity of the "what is this >crap doing here" variety . . . > >My question is how do we go about educating these people to >use descretion when sending out messages? The first time it happens I reply politely to the sender saying "(a) this use of the list is inappropriate, and (b) continued misuse will offend the very people you are trying to reach." Thus far it's worked 100%. Oh yeah, I sign the note "Computer Systems Manager" or "Vice President, Communications" depending on where they sent it to me. It helps that it's true, too. :-) From List-Managers-Owner Fri Feb 19 04:49:37 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA22337; Fri, 19 Feb 93 04:49:37 GMT Received: from heifetz.msen.com by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA22330; Thu, 18 Feb 93 20:49:15 PST Received: by heifetz.msen.com (/\==/\ Smail3.1.22.1 #22.11) id ; Thu, 18 Feb 93 23:47 EST Received: by hamjudo (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA05919; Thu, 18 Feb 93 23:40:28 EST Date: Thu, 18 Feb 93 23:40:28 EST From: paulh@hamjudo.mi.org (Paul Haas) Message-Id: <9302190440.AA05919@hamjudo> To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM, rackow@mcs.anl.gov Subject: Re: Mailing lists and Sales Creatures Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk The problem with that posting was that it was inappropriate, not that it was commercial or that it was from a sales critter. The posting did not match the charter of the mailing list. I have subscribed to some commercial snail mail mailing lists. I would prefer to get some of those advertisements electronically. The charters of the mailing lists that I currently run do not allow advertising. But, if someone asked me, I would be happy to run a small commercial mailing list. All I need is an acceptable charter for the new mailing list. In conclusion, not matching list charter is bad, commercial may be ok. Paul Haas paulh@hamjudo.mi.org P.S. Remember the key phrase "small list", I don't to try to run another firewalls. Of course I would get pissed if someone posted a computer ad to my "NJ condo forsale" list (-:. From List-Managers-Owner Fri Feb 19 21:49:03 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA24844; Fri, 19 Feb 93 21:49:03 GMT Received: from pi-chan.ucsb.edu by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA24837; Fri, 19 Feb 93 13:48:39 PST Received: by pi-chan.ucsb.edu id AA05364 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for List-Managers@greatcircle.com); Fri, 19 Feb 1993 13:48:42 -0800 From: Jim Lick Message-Id: <199302192148.AA05364@pi-chan.ucsb.edu> Subject: Commercial mail: on to the future! To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1993 13:48:41 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: <9302190910.AA22992@mycroft.GreatCircle.COM> from "List-Managers-Digest-Owner@greatcircle.com" at Feb 19, 93 01:10:05 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL11] Content-Type: text Content-Length: 3726 Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I agree with the person who said that the problem is not that the mail was commercial but that it was presumably inappropriate for the mailing list it was posted to. I happened to get the sales message from Magma in question, but in my case it was sent to me personally, not through a mailing list, and it was also advertising something that I am interested in. Obviously, this issue is not clean-cut. But we can look at it in parallel with the real-world issue of junk mail. It is inevitable that "junk mail" will gradually infiltrate the world of email. It is already happening, and there is no more way to stop it than there is to stop junk mail sent through the postal system. There are certain things that can be done, but these will not prevent junk mail, just channel it more effectively. The first principle is that the mailer wants to reach people that might be interested in the product. If this is done well, then the vast majority of recipients will value receiving the information. I know that I enjoy most of the postal junk mail I get because I learn a lot about what is going on in the computer industry just by seeing what products are available. This leads into the issue of commercial mailings on mailing lists. If the post from Magma about S-bus serial/parallel interfaces was posted on for example, a list for discussion of pinball machine owners, it was obviously inappropriate. If it were posted to sun-managers it would be inappropriate because the list is limited to admin problem solving. If it were posted on a list similiar in charter to comp.sys.sun.hardware then I would think that it would be appropriate. The policy for my mailing lists has been that all postings must fall under the topic of discussion. This is very general, but it serves it's purpose well. The only times I've kicked someone off for violating this was once when someone posted a survey on email usage to the 90210 list, and another time when someone posted nothing but baiting flame mail. On the other hand, I do not specifically forbid commercial mail as long as it conforms to this policy. There have in fact been semi- commercial messages posted to my lists from time to time. Examples include (these include only announcements where the poster has some sort of financial interest in the product, not all items of sale discussed): An Avon representative posting that the 90210 Pilot Movie was available through her at a new lower price on the 90210 list. Announcements of new versions of apE on the apE-info mailing lists and how to order. Announcements that when the Life Talking CDs and Cassettes were available and how to order on the life-talking list. Announcements of Life Talking concert dates and prices on the life-talking list. Announcements on some of the music lists on how to order import and hard-to-find recordings from a certain person. I've never received any complaints about any of these because they were very relevant to the list. Even more blatant examples can be found in some of the newsgroups. In the rec.arts.anime newsgroup, the companies AnimEigo and AD Vision regularly post press releases, price lists, etc. And people like it. The network is not going to be able to prevent commercial junk mail. That's just a fact, and no matter how distasteful this is to some there is nothing you can do about it. What we can do is encourage responsible use of this new technology so that we can all live with it. --- jim@pi-chan.ucsb.edu --- Jim Lick --- jim@tcp.com --- jIngOrO@CaveMUCK --- --:):-- perfect little dream the kind that hurts the most -- |\| | |/| --:(:-- --- CaveMUCK is back! --- Telnet to cave.tcp.com (128.95.10.106) port 2283 --- From List-Managers-Owner Sat Feb 20 00:42:26 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA26089; Sat, 20 Feb 93 00:42:26 GMT Received: from uu7.psi.com by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA26067; Fri, 19 Feb 93 16:42:04 PST Received: by uu7.psi.com (5.65b/4.0.071791-PSI/PSINet) via UUCP; id AA16005 for ; Fri, 19 Feb 93 19:35:36 -0500 Date: Fri, 19 Feb 93 19:06:11 GMT From: rick@ssg.com (Rick Emerson) Received: by ssg.com (4.0/3.2.083191-System Support Group) id AA01457; Fri, 19 Feb 93 19:06:11 GMT Message-Id: <9302191906.AA01457@ssg.com> To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Magma redux Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Sigh... I just got their junk mail here. I sent a blistering flame back instructing them not to send their stuff to this site. I told them (as per my post here) any shot they had at selling me their products are gone forever. And I told them their rationalizing approval for sending junk mail (CIX approves it, CIX gates to the NSF-funded backbone, therefor junk mail on the net is OK) was a lame excuse that didn't hold up. I don't expect a reply but will post any here along with a description of the voodoo doll used to curse them . Rick | Richard B. Emerson | Replies may be sent to: | | System Support Group | rick@ssg.com | | 940 Delaware Avenue |-------------------------------------------------+ | Lansdale, PA 19446 USA | "When you ski, you dance with the mountain -- | | Voice: 215.855.1607 | and the mountain always leads." | From List-Managers-Owner Sat Feb 20 04:56:54 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA27729; Sat, 20 Feb 93 04:56:54 GMT Received: from uu7.psi.com by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA27722; Fri, 19 Feb 93 20:56:45 PST Received: by uu7.psi.com (5.65b/4.0.071791-PSI/PSINet) via UUCP; id AA19331 for ; Fri, 19 Feb 93 23:41:33 -0500 Date: Sat, 20 Feb 93 03:42:12 GMT From: rick@ssg.com (Rick Emerson) Received: by ssg.com (4.0/3.2.083191-System Support Group) id AA00929; Sat, 20 Feb 93 03:42:12 GMT Message-Id: <9302200342.AA00929@ssg.com> To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Magma's junk mail Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Damn these people! Rick ------- Start of forwarded message ------- Received: by ssg.com (4.0/3.2.083191-System Support Group) id AA00800; Sat, 20 Feb 93 03:37:08 GMT Received: from nic.cerf.net by uu7.psi.com (5.65b/4.0.071791-PSI/PSINet) via SMTP; id AA16174 for ; Fri, 19 Feb 93 19:42:23 -0500 Received: from magma.COM by nic.cerf.net (4.1/CERFnet-1.0) id AA23472; Fri, 19 Feb 93 16:44:28 PST Received: by magma.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AB01471; Fri, 19 Feb 93 16:41:25 PST Message-Id: <9302200041.AB01471@magma.COM> >From: Mailer-Daemon@magma.COM (Mail Delivery Subsystem) To: Subject: Returned mail: Service unavailable Date: Fri, 19 Feb 93 16:41:25 PST ----- Transcript of session follows ----- mail: /var/spool/mail/magma: cannot append mail: cannot open dead.letter 554 ,ed... Service unavailable ----- Unsent message follows ----- Return-Path: Received: from uu7.psi.com ([38.145.204.6]) by magma.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA01469; Fri, 19 Feb 93 16:41:25 PST Received: by uu7.psi.com (5.65b/4.0.071791-PSI/PSINet) via UUCP; id AA15865 for ; Fri, 19 Feb 93 19:31:25 -0500 Date: Fri, 19 Feb 93 18:55:19 GMT >From: rick@ssg.com (Rick Emerson) Received: by ssg.com (4.0/3.2.083191-System Support Group) id AA01316; Fri, 19 Feb 93 18:55:19 GMT Message-Id: <9302191855.AA01316@ssg.com> To: magma@magma.COM (Sales@MAGMA.COM) Subject: New MAGMA Products In-Reply-To: <9302191600.AA01623@ magma.COM> References: <9302191600.AA01623@ magma.COM> Do NOT, repeat NOT EVER, send your junk mail to this site again! Rest assured that any hopes you may have had for selling your product to this company are utterly lost. While CIX may accept junk mail (may it drown in its wasted bandwidth for doing so!) this conduct is unacceptable on the NSF-funded back and you know it full well. Your lame excuse for bringing trash to this net is recognized for what it is: an unwarranted intrusion and a mis-use of the net. Richard B. Emerson President, System Support Group ------- End of forwarded message ------- | Richard B. Emerson | Replies may be sent to: | | System Support Group | rick@ssg.com | | 940 Delaware Avenue |-------------------------------------------------+ | Lansdale, PA 19446 USA | "When you ski, you dance with the mountain -- | | Voice: 215.855.1607 | and the mountain always leads." | From List-Managers-Owner Sat Feb 20 17:01:16 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA29001; Sat, 20 Feb 93 17:01:16 GMT Received: from access.digex.com by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA28992; Sat, 20 Feb 93 08:59:47 PST Received: by access.digex.com id AA27663 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for List-Managers@greatcircle.com); Sat, 20 Feb 1993 11:59:22 -0500 Date: Sat, 20 Feb 1993 11:59:22 -0500 From: Ken Mayer Message-Id: <199302201659.AA27663@access.digex.com> To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: List-Managers-Digest-Owner@greatcircle.com's message of Sat, 20 Feb 93 01:10:05 PST <9302200910.AA28277@mycroft.GreatCircle.COM> Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Subject The cost of e-mail Reply-to: kenmayer@access.digex.com [sigh] Good or bad, we live (most us, anyway) in a free market economy where advertising your product is a time honored method of attracting customers. Some advertisers write better ads than others, some are more savy about their market than others. I get junk mail in my (USmail) mailbox everyday, even with a letter to the Direct Marketing Association (explaining that I don't want to be bothered with most of this stuff). It is something that I've come to accept as one of the costs of living in a free society. I don't go ballistic over every letter explaining that I've just won a free vacation to the Bermuda Triangle. Usually I let me wallet do the talking. In the USmail world there is a limiting factor on the number of pieces of junk mail I can get every day. It's the fact that printing and paper cost money and money is a scarce resource. Still, firms find tens of billions of dollars to spend on this dreck every year. In the e-mail world, the paradigm (token $0.10 word) has changed. Companies that sell connection services no longer count bits. You buy a "pipe" and you may fill it however you wish. The bigger the pipe, the more money you shell out every month (there's that scarce resource again). And you only pay for one copy of whatever letter you send. The costs of sending a letter have been distributed. I know this sounds pedantic, so I'll get to the point: While most of the world sites still pay for kbytes transferred and time connected, the new services (at least from what I've seen in the U.S.) are abandoning the old telephone compay model for the new data-pipe model. CIX is one of those organizations. They also want you to abandon NSFnet for a commercial service because they think that the market has grown enough that there is a critical mass of customers out there, enough to support for-profit ventures. Why should the U.S. Government compete *against* the free market? Take all that into account and what I see is the fledgling attempts at the free market adapting to a new medium. Sure, the ad to the mailing list was a dumb idea, but then so was "New Formula" Coca-Cola. Think about this: There a lot of mailing list management applications that will give a list of subscribers, no questions asked. What if I used a little more sophistication, collected these lists of people from various lists, and wrote custom e-mail to selected people on the list? Technically, I wouldn't be using a mailing-list to distribute my advertisements, so I wouldn't be abusing the list, would I? Or how about if I collect e-mail addresses from everyone who posts to comp.sys.pc.*? I think this will happen, probably sooner rather than later, and with more frequency as time goes on. I don't think there's any way to stop it either. As the Internet grows, more companies are going to view it as a valuable, untapped market. What does this mean for us, list managers? Well, we might be called upon to exercise more editorial control over the content of a list, either manually, or through more sophisticated tools. Some managers might see their lists of subscribers as having value, and control its distribution, perhaps selling it. Others might be inclined to educate people who post inappropriate material; that education can be harsh or it can be gentle. I believe that most human beings are reasonable and will respond positively when treated with respect. For the few rowdies who get their kicks from causing trouble, there are other means. At last year's USENIX Security Symposium in Baltimore, there was an informal suggestion that network managers exchange information on various crackers and simply blacklist them. It turns out that there is a relatively few number of sites and users that consistently attempt break-ins, and once banished from the net, the net managers usually get their act together and fix the security holes. This has gotten more long winded than I intened. Let me sum up by saying that "commercial" advertisements are just as much free speech as almost anything else. We might not like it, or approve of it, or permit it within certain arenas, but its there and we should find positive ways of accomodating it. The other choice is to let the advertisers set the rules on there own terms. Ken From List-Managers-Owner Sat Feb 20 19:41:59 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA29193; Sat, 20 Feb 93 19:41:59 GMT Received: from relay2.UU.NET by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA29186; Sat, 20 Feb 93 11:41:39 PST Received: from uunet.uu.net (via LOCALHOST.UU.NET) by relay2.UU.NET with SMTP (5.61/UUNET-internet-primary) id AA00857; Sat, 20 Feb 93 14:42:12 -0500 Received: from eiffel.UUCP by uunet.uu.net with UUCP/RMAIL (queueing-rmail) id 144147.28291; Sat, 20 Feb 1993 14:41:47 EST Received: from lyon.eiffel.com by glasgow.eiffel.com (4.1/SMI-4.0) id AA20661; Sat, 20 Feb 93 10:43:39 PST Received: by lyon.eiffel.com (5.61/1.34) id AA07781; Sat, 20 Feb 93 10:46:19 -0800 To: Ken Mayer Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: The cost of e-mail In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sat, 20 Feb 93 11:59:22 EST." <199302201659.AA27663@access.digex.com> X-Mailer: MH [version 6.7.2] Organization: Interactive Software Engineering, Santa Barbara CA Date: Sat, 20 Feb 93 10:46:17 PST Message-Id: <7779.730233977@lyon.eiffel.com> From: Raphael Manfredi Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Quoting Ken Mayer: > Some managers > might see their lists of subscribers as having value, and control its > distribution, perhaps selling it. Another reason why the Return-Receipt-To header has to be stripped out when mailing to a closed/private mailing list, otherwise you have a mean to get the list of subscribers (at high cost, but still...). -- Raphael Manfredi Interactive Software Engineering Inc. 270 Storke Road, Suite #7 / Tel +1 (805) 685-1006 \ Goleta, California 93117, USA \ Fax +1 (805) 685-6869 / From List-Managers-Owner Sun Feb 21 02:47:24 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA04794; Sun, 21 Feb 93 02:47:24 GMT Received: from pi-chan.ucsb.edu by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA04781; Sat, 20 Feb 93 18:47:01 PST Received: by pi-chan.ucsb.edu id AA07034 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for List-Managers@greatcircle.com); Sat, 20 Feb 1993 18:47:08 -0800 From: Jim Lick Message-Id: <199302210247.AA07034@pi-chan.ucsb.edu> Subject: Re: Magma's junk mail To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM, com-priv@psi.com Date: Sat, 20 Feb 1993 18:47:06 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: <9302200910.AA28277@mycroft.GreatCircle.COM> from "List-Managers-Digest-Owner@greatcircle.com" at Feb 20, 93 01:10:05 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL11] Content-Type: text Content-Length: 2719 Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > From: rick@ssg.com (Rick Emerson) > Date: Fri, 19 Feb 93 19:06:11 GMT > Subject: Magma redux ... > And I told them their rationalizing > approval for sending junk mail (CIX approves it, CIX gates to the > NSF-funded backbone, therefor junk mail on the net is OK) was a lame > excuse that didn't hold up. ... > ------------------------------ > > From: rick@ssg.com (Rick Emerson) > Date: Sat, 20 Feb 93 03:42:12 GMT > Subject: Magma's junk mail ... > Received: by ssg.com (4.0/3.2.083191-System Support Group) > id AA00800; Sat, 20 Feb 93 03:37:08 GMT > Received: from nic.cerf.net by uu7.psi.com (5.65b/4.0.071791-PSI/PSINet) via SMTP; > id AA16174 for ; Fri, 19 Feb 93 19:42:23 -0500 > Received: from magma.COM by nic.cerf.net (4.1/CERFnet-1.0) id AA23472; Fri, 19 Feb 93 16:44:28 PST > Received: by magma.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1) > id AB01471; Fri, 19 Feb 93 16:41:25 PST > Message-Id: <9302200041.AB01471@magma.COM> > >From: Mailer-Daemon@magma.COM (Mail Delivery Subsystem) > To: > Subject: Returned mail: Service unavailable > Date: Fri, 19 Feb 93 16:41:25 PST ... > ----- Unsent message follows ----- > Return-Path: > Received: from uu7.psi.com ([38.145.204.6]) by magma.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1) > id AA01469; Fri, 19 Feb 93 16:41:25 PST > Received: by uu7.psi.com (5.65b/4.0.071791-PSI/PSINet) via UUCP; > id AA15865 for ; Fri, 19 Feb 93 19:31:25 -0500 > Date: Fri, 19 Feb 93 18:55:19 GMT > >From: rick@ssg.com (Rick Emerson) > Received: by ssg.com (4.0/3.2.083191-System Support Group) > id AA01316; Fri, 19 Feb 93 18:55:19 GMT > Message-Id: <9302191855.AA01316@ssg.com> > To: magma@magma.COM (Sales@MAGMA.COM) > Subject: New MAGMA Products > In-Reply-To: <9302191600.AA01623@ magma.COM> > References: <9302191600.AA01623@ magma.COM> ... > While CIX may accept junk mail (may it > drown in its wasted bandwidth for doing so!) this conduct is > unacceptable on the NSF-funded back and you know it full well. Your > lame excuse for bringing trash to this net is recognized for what it > is: an unwarranted intrusion and a mis-use of the net. Rick, Mail between you and Magma never uses the NSF net. PSI and CERFnet are connected via the CIX. Thus there is nothing wrong with their lame excuse assuming that it was sent directly to you. If it was sent through an mailing list then there may be a different story. PS: I'm adding the com-priv list to the discussion. --- jim@pi-chan.ucsb.edu --- Jim Lick --- jim@tcp.com --- jIngOrO@CaveMUCK --- --:):-- perfect little dream the kind that hurts the most -- |\| | |/| --:(:-- --- CaveMUCK is back! --- Telnet to cave.tcp.com (128.95.10.106) port 2283 --- From List-Managers-Owner Sun Feb 21 03:04:11 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA04894; Sun, 21 Feb 93 03:04:11 GMT Received: from localhost by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA04885; Sat, 20 Feb 93 19:03:34 PST Message-Id: <9302210303.AA04885@mycroft.GreatCircle.COM> To: Jim Lick Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM, com-priv@psi.com Subject: Re: Magma's junk mail In-Reply-To: Your message of Sat, 20 Feb 1993 18:47:06 -0800 (PST) Date: Sat, 20 Feb 93 19:03:33 -0800 From: Brent Chapman Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk # Mail between you and Magma never uses the NSF net. PSI and # CERFnet are connected via the CIX. Thus there is nothing wrong with # their lame excuse assuming that it was sent directly to you. If it # was sent through an mailing list then there may be a different story. You can't tell whether the mail went through the NSF net just by looking at the received lines. All that tells you is that none of the intermediate machines that handled the message are solely on the NSF net (though many are probably on the NSF net in addition to whatever CIX networks they're on). You have no way of knowing how the packets got from one machine to the next; they may very well have gone over the NSF net, or via Australia, for all you can tell from the headers. Even if you do a "traceroute" from each host to the next, all that tells you is the route packets are taking right that second; you have no way of knowing what they were doing 10 seconds ago or what they'll be doing 10 seconds in the future. # PS: I'm adding the com-priv list to the discussion. I wish you hadn't. The whole NSF net "acceptable use" thing is a red herring in this context, anyway. The real point is that somebody sent a blatant electronic junk mail advertisement to a mailing list where it was unwelcome. Doesn't matter if it went over the CIX, or the NSF net, or UUCP from here to Romania and back. -Brent -- Brent Chapman Great Circle Associates Brent@GreatCircle.COM 1057 West Dana Street +1 415 962 0841 Mountain View, CA 94041 From List-Managers-Owner Sun Feb 21 11:28:36 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA05965; Sun, 21 Feb 93 11:28:36 GMT Received: from grasp1.univ-lyon1.fr by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA05957; Sun, 21 Feb 93 03:28:03 PST Received: by grasp1.univ-lyon1.fr (5.67a8/IDA-1.5f) via Rocad id AA18376; Sun, 21 Feb 1993 12:28:22 +0100 Date: Sun, 21 Feb 1993 12:28:22 +0100 From: Christophe Wolfhugel Message-Id: <199302211128.AA18376@grasp1.univ-lyon1.fr> To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Magma's junk mail Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Jim Lick wrote: > PS: I'm adding the com-priv list to the discussion. What is this list, please explain us the goal of it, for those not subscribing. > Mail between you and Magma never uses the NSF net. PSI and > CERFnet are connected via the CIX. Thus there is nothing wrong with > their lame excuse assuming that it was sent directly to you. If it > was sent through an mailing list then there may be a different story. Look folks, it is not because both sides are member of the CIX that unsollicited mail should be encouraged or even allowed. As long as the recipient pays its share for what he receives, which is in fact the principle of all those networks, as when you buy a pipe its bidirectionnaly, you don't get the back channel for free, unsollicited mail should be avoided. When I get junk snail-mail it costs me nothing because all the expenses are paid by the sender. And if he did not put enough postage I simply reject the mail. When I get junk email, CIX or not CIX, it uses a part of the pipe I am renting to my network providers, so I pay for what I receive. I'm not yet willing to pay for junk. Let's introduce a new RR in the DNS: *.magma.com IN JUNK (when not present meaning of course junk mail is not desired). Or better: *.insa-lyon.fr IN 10 JUNK-MX mailhost.magma.com ;) Chris From List-Managers-Owner Sun Feb 21 21:19:25 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA08208; Sun, 21 Feb 93 21:19:25 GMT Received: from relay1.UU.NET by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA08196; Sun, 21 Feb 93 13:19:14 PST Received: from uunet.uu.net (via LOCALHOST.UU.NET) by relay1.UU.NET with SMTP (5.61/UUNET-internet-primary) id AA23586; Sun, 21 Feb 93 16:19:18 -0500 Received: from rde.UUCP by uunet.uu.net with UUCP/RMAIL (queueing-rmail) id 161840.20018; Sun, 21 Feb 1993 16:18:40 EST Received: from homebase.vistachrome.com by vistachrome.com (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA06763; Sun, 21 Feb 93 10:36:39 EST Received: by homebase.vistachrome.com (5.65/1.35) id AA13272; Sun, 21 Feb 93 10:42:43 -0500 From: andy@homebase.vistachrome.com (Andy Finkenstadt) Message-Id: <9302211542.AA13272@homebase.vistachrome.com> Subject: Digesting Software (simple, C-language, portable) To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Sun, 21 Feb 1993 10:42:42 -0500 (EST) Reply-To: andy@homebase.vistachrome.com X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL20] Content-Type: text Content-Length: 1661 Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I am in the process of finishing up some digesting software that accepts an input of Mailbox messages (From_ headers) plus a digest name and creates a digest-format message with all extraneous headers removed. Total size is around 7K bytes of uncommented C-code. I would be interested in feedback from people who maintain digest versions of mailing lists regarding the functionality to implement a daily digest - things that I can think of include a cron job to split the input into a configurable size, sorting of subject headers (sans Re:) to keep things in the same digest, special placement of Administrivia items, and so on. The various portions of the digest are configurable as standard text files: Header, Preamble-before-contents, Content list, Preamble-after-contents, and the Trailer. -rw-rw-r-- 1 andy dba 13606 Feb 20 15:35 SAMPLE-V02.001 -rw-rw-r-- 1 andy dba 209 Feb 20 13:47 SAMPLE.HEAD -rw-rw-r-- 1 andy dba 15527 Feb 20 15:35 SAMPLE.INPUT -rw-rw-r-- 1 andy dba 74 Feb 20 14:19 SAMPLE.POST -rw-rw-r-- 1 andy dba 169 Feb 20 14:16 SAMPLE.PRE -rw-rw-r-- 1 andy dba 76 Feb 20 14:20 SAMPLE.TRAIL -rw-rw-r-- 1 andy dba 6795 Feb 20 14:35 digest.c Thanks in advance for any feedback. Replies to the list are fine as timing is not critical. -- Andrew Finkenstadt, Vista-Chrome, Inc., Homes & Land Publishing Corporation GEnie Unix RoundTable Manager, andy@vistachrome.com, andy@genie.geis.com. "[The author] neither accidentally nor intentionally omits or includes anything that could support a preconceived thesis." - C&EN 21-DEC-92 p.72 From List-Managers-Owner Sun Feb 21 22:19:40 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA08313; Sun, 21 Feb 93 22:19:40 GMT Received: from mimsy.cs.UMD.EDU by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA08306; Sun, 21 Feb 93 14:19:34 PST Received: by mimsy.cs.UMD.EDU (5.61/UMIACS-0.9/04-05-88) id AA14445; Sun, 21 Feb 93 17:20:01 -0500 Received: by bahainvs (NeXT-1.0 (From Sendmail 5.52)/NeXT-2.1) id AA23697; Sun, 21 Feb 93 17:05:30 EST Date: Sun, 21 Feb 93 17:05:30 EST From: johnw@bahainvs.org (John Wiegley) Message-Id: <9302212205.AA23697@bahainvs> Received: by NeXT Mailer (1.63) To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Mail Archivers Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I need something that will take a bunch of e-mail, and create an e-mail archive accesible via an automatic server. There are lists that I run which do not have a capacity for allowing users access to old posts. Does anyone know if there is anything like this out there? If so, what FTP address/BBS phone number(s) should I go to to find it? Thanks, John Wiegley (johnw@bahainvs.org) From List-Managers-Owner Mon Feb 22 02:28:01 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA09267; Mon, 22 Feb 93 02:28:01 GMT Received: from localhost by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA09256; Sun, 21 Feb 93 18:27:46 PST Message-Id: <9302220227.AA09256@mycroft.GreatCircle.COM> To: andy@homebase.vistachrome.com Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Digesting Software (simple, C-language, portable) In-Reply-To: Your message of Sun, 21 Feb 1993 10:42:42 -0500 (EST) Date: Sun, 21 Feb 93 18:27:44 -0800 From: Brent Chapman Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk # I am in the process of finishing up some digesting software # that accepts an input of Mailbox messages (From_ headers) plus # a digest name and creates a digest-format message with all # extraneous headers removed. Total size is around 7K bytes # of uncommented C-code. # # I would be interested in feedback from people who maintain # digest versions of mailing lists regarding the functionality # to implement a daily digest - things that I can think of # include a cron job to split the input into a configurable # size, sorting of subject headers (sans Re:) to keep things in # the same digest, special placement of Administrivia items, # and so on. The set of perl scripts that I use to do Firewalls-Digest, List-Managers-Digest, and PhoneStation-Digest are available for anonymous FTP from FTP.GreatCircle.COM, file "pub/list-managers/tools/digest.shar". -Brent -- Brent Chapman Great Circle Associates Brent@GreatCircle.COM 1057 West Dana Street +1 415 962 0841 Mountain View, CA 94041 From List-Managers-Owner Mon Feb 22 16:34:20 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA10837; Mon, 22 Feb 93 16:34:20 GMT Received: from yonge.csri.toronto.edu by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA10830; Mon, 22 Feb 93 08:33:57 PST Received: from alias by yonge.csri.toronto.edu with UUCP id <14404>; Mon, 22 Feb 1993 11:34:01 -0500 Received: from dino.alias.com by barney.alias.com with SMTP id AA16717 (5.65a/IDA-1.4.2 for andy@homebase.vistachrome.com); Mon, 22 Feb 93 11:23:14 -0500 Received: by dino.alias.com id AA17444 (5.65a/IDA-1.4.2 for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM); Mon, 22 Feb 93 11:23:12 -0500 From: chk@alias.com (C. Harald Koch) Message-Id: <9302221623.AA17444@dino.alias.com> Subject: Re: Digesting Software (simple, C-language, portable) To: andy@homebase.vistachrome.com Date: Mon, 22 Feb 1993 11:23:10 -0500 Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: <9302211542.AA13272@homebase.vistachrome.com> from "Andy Finkenstadt" at Feb 21, 93 10:42:42 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL8] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 902 Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > I would be interested in feedback from people who maintain > digest versions of mailing lists regarding the functionality > to implement a daily digest - things that I can think of There's a good daily digest run by James Perkins, the Traveller Mailing List. He's available at traveller-request@engrg.uwo.ca. I mostly like the format he uses, which is why I point it out. His software includes processing to put long messages and "special messages" (containing certain keywords, like starship designs) at the end of a digest, so that some readers can ignore them more easily. -- Main's Law: For every | C. Harald Koch Alias Research, Inc. Toronto, ON action, there is an equal | chk@alias.com (work-related mail) and opposite goverment | chk@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (permanent address) program. | VE3TLA@VE3OY.#SCON.ON.CA.NA (AMPRNet) From List-Managers-Owner Tue Feb 23 13:24:17 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA13875; Tue, 23 Feb 93 13:24:17 GMT Received: from CS.UWindsor.Ca (csgate.lamf.uwindsor.ca) by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA13868; Tue, 23 Feb 93 05:24:00 PST Received: by CS.UWindsor.Ca (4.1/SMI-DDN) id AA23340; Tue, 23 Feb 93 06:02:03 EST Message-Id: <9302231102.AA23340@CS.UWindsor.Ca> Subject: "talk" to a list server? To: (List managers) Date: Tue, 23 Feb 93 6:02:03 EST From: ophof@CS.UWindsor.Ca (Scott Ophof) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11] Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Possibly the idea has already been suggested, and if so I'm sure you'll tell me so. :-) What about enhancing the various list manager implementations on Unix so that users can "talk" with them? The analogue of the way "RSCS MSG"s are used to let people tell a LISTSERV what they want it to do. From a machine on a BITnet node: TELL LISTSERV@DEARN INDEX REXXLIST could from a Unix machine on the Internet become: utell majordomo@greatcircle.com subscribe list-managers I use the term "utell" here to indicate the process of starting up a TCP/IP connection with that list manager, etc. This is *not* the same as either FTP or TELNET; I see no need to login to that host. But if that step *must* be taken, then it might as well be done "under the hood", ie. invisible to the user. Your opinions? Regards. $$\ F. Scott Ophof ---------------------------> I speak *only* for *myself* <----- My credo: Computers exist for OUR benefit, NEVER vice-versa. From List-Managers-Owner Tue Feb 23 15:03:10 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA14095; Tue, 23 Feb 93 15:03:10 GMT Received: from cs-mail.bu.edu by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA14088; Tue, 23 Feb 93 07:03:03 PST Received: from CS.BU.EDU by cs-mail.bu.edu (5.61+++/SMI-4.0.3) id AA12840; Tue, 23 Feb 93 10:03:23 -0500 From: tasos@cs.bu.edu (Anastasios Kotsikonas) Received: by cs.bu.edu (5.61+++/Spike-2.0) id AA27652; Tue, 23 Feb 93 10:03:22 -0500 Date: Tue, 23 Feb 93 10:03:22 -0500 Message-Id: <9302231503.AA27652@cs.bu.edu> To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM, ophof@CS.UWindsor.Ca Subject: Re: "talk" to a list server? Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > What about enhancing the various list manager implementations on > Unix so that users can "talk" with them? The analogue of the way > "RSCS MSG"s are used to let people tell a LISTSERV what they want > it to do. From a machine on a BITnet node: > TELL LISTSERV@DEARN INDEX REXXLIST > could from a Unix machine on the Internet become: > utell majordomo@greatcircle.com subscribe list-managers This is already done on UNIX ListServer via the remote list mechanism. Anyone registering his/her list as public with this system will have the benefit of having requests forwarded to the right place. Actually the user does not even have to know what mail management software the remote system is running, or what the request address should be -- he will be told when the request is forwarded. Tasos From List-Managers-Owner Tue Feb 23 16:01:27 1993 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA14263; Tue, 23 Feb 93 16:01:27 GMT Received: from relay1.UU.NET by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-921015) id AA13811; Tue, 23 Feb 93 04:59:54 PST Received: from uunet.uu.net (via LOCALHOST.UU.NET) by relay1.UU.NET with SMTP (5.61/UUNET-internet-primary) id AA19436; Tue, 23 Feb 93 05:51:55 -0500 Received: from eiffel.UUCP by uunet.uu.net with UUCP/RMAIL (queueing-rmail) id 055040.13844; Tue, 23 Feb 1993 05:50:40 EST Received: from lyon.eiffel.com by glasgow.eiffel.com (4.1/SMI-4.0) id AA28803; Mon, 22 Feb 93 17:31:12 PST Received: by lyon.eiffel.com (5.61/1.34) id AA19008; Mon, 22 Feb 93 17:33:52 -0800 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Mailing list software review X-Mailer: MH [version 6.7.2] Organization: Interactive Software Engineering, Santa Barbara CA Date: Mon, 22 Feb 93 17:33:51 PST Message-Id: <19006.730431231@lyon.eiffel.com> From: Raphael Manfredi Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM INTRODUCTION This article presents a comparison of three mailing-list software, majordomo, procmail and listserver. Only those parts of the software related to mailing list management and their satellites (archival, digests, list maintenance, etc...). We'll start with a quick introduction to those three packages, then we'll draw a feature comparison table for quick reference, and we'll conclude with a discussion, which will deal with specific aspects like bounce control or possibilities of extension. I have tried to keep this presentation as technical as possible, and I made all the possible efforts to ensure its accuracy. However, those packages are maintained and their code evolves. Some new features might be added in the near future, so this comparison is only a snapshot of the current releases. I apologize in advance for any mistake which could have slipped through and I take full responsibility for them. PACKAGES OVERVIEW --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Name: Majordomo Version: 1.46 Author: Brent Chapman Retrieved-From: ftp.greatcircle.com:/pub/majordomo.tar.Z * Overview Majordomo is a set of perl scripts implementing a mailing list server along with some administrative tools. Majordomo itself is the recipient and handler of all the *-request mail, and can deal with typical subscribe/unsubscribe requests, as well as basic interrogations on the lists (who is on the list, which lists one belongs, etc...). One Majordomo site can manage multiple mailing lists. Actually what happens is that *-request mail is automatically replied to with a canned answer explaining how to use majordomo. The messages have to be sent explicitly to the majordomo server. (Note that majordomo could be made smart enough to derive the missing info from the address in the To:, so that single requests like 'unsubscribe' would take the list argument from the part before the *-request in the To: field) Majordomo understands the concept of "closed" lists (lists where approval is necessary to get subscribed) and "private" lists (where only member may query the list database about others). There are also "secret" lists (lists that do not show up in the list of lists managed), and "auto" lists (the complete inverse from "closed"; all requests are automatically approved). * Configuration A file Majordomo.cf specifies basic configuration parameters, using plain perl syntax (the file is eval'ed directly by the perl scripts). There are a few parameters, setting the machine name, the owner of the list, the location of the logfile, the mailer to be used along with its arguments, etc... One directory 'listdir' is used to store the files for all the mailing lists managed by the site, and the name of the list is prepended to all the various auxiliary files. For instance, list-name.passwd contains the "approve" password for the list-name list. It's possible to run multiple majordomo servers answering different aliases, since each majordomo has its own config file. * Installation To install majordomo, you need to create a new account (say 'list'), set up a majordomo.cf file (in /etc for instance) and create 'homedir' and 'listdir' directories (as specified by majordomo.cf). This is done once and for all, no matter how many lists you want to manage. To create a new list "list-name", you need to set up a few files in the 'listdir' directory (by hand, since there is no tool to help you do that), and edit sendmail's aliases file to record the list aliases. Here is an example of the aliases you will need: list-name: "|/majordomo/wrapper resend -p bulk -l list-name -s list-name-out" list-name-out: :include:/majordomo/lists/list-name list-name-approval: list-name-owner list-name-request: "|/majordomo/wrapper request-answer list-name" And of course, you need the basic majordomo alias and majordomo-owner which will redirect administrative mail to the correct account/program. * Notes The documentation is not completely accurate here. Apparently, some recent changes (like request-answer was formerly called request-recording) have not been completely propagated throughout the supporting files. The author recommends the usage of a C wrapper to reset uid/gid so that perl does not complain (taint checks). Also, scripts make usage of perl's -U option -- which allows "unsafe" operations to be performed. Administration of the majordomo server may be done remotely via e-mail request, the list owner does not need to have an account on the server machine, and could even belong to another organization. * Sources The package is completely written in perl, with the small exception of the C wrapper (a little more than one hundred lines). Perl seems to be well suited for that task, and the complete majordomo system "weighs" only around 2200 lines. The code is typical perl code: not too cryptic but not completely obvious either, and sometimes lacks some comments. However, should a problem occur at a user site, someone with a fair knowledge of perl would be able to easily track down the bug, and eventually fix it. * Compilation Irrelevant (perl scripts). * Documentation The documentation included in the package is minimal, but I believe it covers everything which should be known. The Majordomo paper, available from ftp.greatcircle.com:/pub/majordomo.ps.Z gives a general introduction to Majordomo's functionalities, but does not really document the package itself. ------------------------- Name: procmail Version: 2.81 Author: Stephen R. van den Berg Retrieved-From: comp.sources.misc Patches-From: Author * Overview Procmail is mainly a mail filter, coming along with a set of programs for mail reformatting and mailing list management. The procmail program analyzes some "recipe" file and determines where a message should be delivered based (mainly) on the information contained in its header. The mailing list subsystem can manage multiple lists, answers automatically to *-request mail, subscribing/unsubscribing users, listing the current subscribers, etc... The mailing list maintainer can remotely "administrate" his list via X-Command command headers. Each list is automatically archived, the amount of backlog being configurable. The archive can be accessed via e-mail. (Note that since procmail is a mail filter, the mailing list management is only ONE example of activities that can be "programmed" via rules and scripts or programs, based on mail header/body parsing. You could use procmail to program a mail archive, an archie tool, or anything you want which involves e-mail.) * Configuration Relatively easy. All you need to do is edit the rc.init file and set up about a dozen parameters. Some of those parameters are really obscure, for instance: match_threshold = 30730 # for close matches to the list kept is mystery all the way round. What does THIS mean? I could not find any pointer in the documentation. Actually, the release comes with a set of defaults so you do not need to go through the hassle of configuring each list -- simply accepting the defaults should be fine 80% of the time. * Installation Really easy. All is done from a 'list' account or under a special 'list' directory in your own account, initialized by a script 'install.sh'. To create a new list, you say createlist testing maintainer@somewhere.edu and to remove an existing list, you say removelist testing The 'createlist' script does not actually modify the sendmail aliases file, but echoes the lines which should be included verbatim into /etc/aliases (or /usr/lib/aliases). * Notes Although the initialization and customization of the list is somehow straightforward, the processing of the mail sent to the list requires the launch of many processes: 'procmail' first, which in turn will spawn 'formail' to munge headers and 'sendmail' to actually dispatch the mail. It should be noted that those processes tend to be small and do not use much CPU resource. Recipe files (the heart of procmail) are *really* cryptic. Those files conduct the filtering process by specifying rules and actions to be undertaken when those rules succeed, but it looks like this: :3wc !^Subject:(.*[^a-z])?Re: $!^(X-(Loop: $listaddr|Diagnostic:)|$X_COMMAND) ^FROM_DAEMON | sed -e $cutoff_bounce',$ d' >tmp.request :Ahfw | procbounce Not that intuitive isn't it? Once you know the format, you understand how easy it is to parse, but I would prefer more parsing effort from procmail and an enhanced readability instead of this obscure specification. That criticism has to be soften somehow by considering that the mailing list package is an "advanced" application for the procmail filter. I am not reviewing procmail as a filter here. The good news is: the author supplies you with all the necessary rule files and you should not have to dive into them in order to use the mailinglist management capabilities. * Sources The main programs are written in C (procmail, formail, multigram), the remaining is half shell scripts and half recipe files. The overall package size is medium (around 5400 lines of C, which means 15000 when formatted the "usual" way). The C code is really obscure, with little comments. Formatting is original, but that cannot be an issue. Shell scripts are trivial and I already said what I thought of the recipe files -- they are well commented though. * Compilation Impossible on my MIPS. The author says my include files are damaged beyond repair. Compiles without trouble on a SUN SPARC. The package is auto-configured, but does not uses any public domain auto configuration package. The author devised his own (impressive sometimes) autoconf scheme. When compilation fails, it's hard to know what to do and where to look at, since it's easy to get lost throughout the multiple and recursive calls to make and other shell scripts. I have to say that my machine is a really weird one, having both BSD and USG environments at the same time. * Documentation Good. It surely makes a strong point explaining why the unique combination of procmail and sendmail makes it easier to deal with a mailing list: much filtering can be done by procmail to avoid loops, maintain the archive backlog and answer remote administrative requests, or redirecting subscribe requests to the *-request address instead of dispatching them to the whole list. After reading all the various README, INTRO and FEATURES files, I felt the author had made a wonderful documenting job. ------------------------- Name: UNIX listserver Version: 6.0 beta 4 Author: Anastasios Kotsikonas Retrieved-From: tasos@cs.bu.edu * Overview Listserver is a complete mailing list server, whose goal is to automate as much as possible that part of the mailing list management process which can be automated. It is possible to establish a network connection to the serverd daemon for issuing requests and or maintaining the list, but a batch processing of e-mail commands is also possible (typical subscribe or approve commands). The listserver may manage multiple lists, moderated or not, public or private and/or closed. Lists can be archived and the program provides an interface to retrieve messages from the archive. Users may also upload (and archive) files if the owner(s) allow so. Each user may temporarily suspend its participation and still remain on the list (so he may still "post" but will not receive anything), may switch between digest and reflector mode, may ask to receive a copy of his own contributions, etc... Gateways to news or to other lists may be installed, and the listserver supports the interesting notion of "peer" and "remote" lists, a list which is known locally but handled by a peer listserver or another compatible server. * Configuration Adding a new list seems relatively easy. An alias has to be added to the /etc/aliases, looking like this: list_alias: "|HOMEDIR/catmail -L LIST_ALIAS -f" The list server itself runs under its own uid and has a dedicated 'server' account. Another entry: listserver: "|HOMEDIR/catmail -r -f" is needed for the correct forwarding of administrative requests. * Installation I did not go that far (the system would not compile on my machine...). (The author mentions it has been successfully ported on the following hosts: SUN IBM SGI DEC HP Convex Stardent NeXT SCO Apollo Sequent DG) However, it appears the following steps are necessary: - A dedicated user account must be chosen to run the package, and a listserver alias has to be set to redirect all the mail to that user account. - If TCP connection is wanted, the /etc/services file has to be edited to add a port entry for serverd. - A global 'config' file must then be edited to set up basic configuration parameters like the name of the local organization, the lists we wish to serve, etc... Then of course, each mailing list has its private files held in a separate directory, one per list. Those may be made public for direct ftp access, depending what the specification is. * Notes I have been really impressed by the quality of the documentation and the impressive list of features. The whole package is consistent and seems well thought out. There has been lots of contribution (code and/or suggestions) from various "active" managers so the code is "alive". Unfortunately, since I was not able to compile the system and use it, my whole judgment is only based on what I read in the documentation and what I could understand by having a close look to the sources. One of the advantages of the direct connection is that any requests for "remote" or "peer" lists are handled by chain-internet-connecting to the remote servers, if they go "live" too. Therefore, a user may no longer have to know where a list is located around the world -- there are currently 222 such registered remote lists. (This last figure according to the author) * Sources The whole package is written in C. The formatting used makes the code a little compact, but it's very very well commented and clear. I had absolutely no trouble glancing at the various parts of the code and understanding what their purpose was. * Compilation Failed, unfortunately, on my MIPS. Despite my willing, I was unable to find enough free time to complete the port: too many problems. The author does not uses any auto configuration script, so the initial parameters setting and Makefile editing is boring. When something goes wrong, it's hard to make a general change, so you end-up adding some #ifdef for your own platform and the code becomes messy. Given the overall quality of the product, not being able to compile it is really frustrating. I recommend the use of the metaconfig tool from the dist 3.0 release (dist 2.0 was originally written by Larry Wall, but dist 3.0 has been developed independently) or the GNU autoconf package, which both achieve the same goal using completely different techniques. * Documentation Excellent. I was able to fully appreciate its quality given my impossibility to test the package "for real". I guess this is a rather personal appreciation, since other people have called it "sparse". Truth probably lies somewhere between those two extremes. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- FEATURE TABLE Legend: yes: feature is implemented no: feature is not implemented n/a: not available as is, but some tools might be connected to the program (or on top of the program) to implement them. o/s: out of scope; such a feature may or may not be externally provided, but does not directly fall under the program's jurisdiction, so to speak. (12): please refer to note #12 for further comments. Feature Majordomo Procmail Listserver Basic administrative requests - subscribe, unsubscribe yes yes yes - free format for (un)subscribe no yes no Advanced user requests: - temporarily stop reception no no yes - change between digest/reflector no no yes - who is on the list yes yes yes - lists served