From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 1 08:08:42 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id HAA24250; Sun, 1 Aug 1999 07:53:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail.MONBEBE.NET (mail.monbebe.net [216.25.42.193]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id HAA24241 for ; Sun, 1 Aug 1999 07:53:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Amiens-4-5.club-internet.fr [195.36.194.5] by mail.MONBEBE.NET with ESMTP (SMTPD32-5.01) id A0EF16501A0; Sun, 01 Aug 1999 10:59:59 EST Date: Sun, 1 Aug 1999 11:32:27 +0200 From: Monbebe Admin X-Mailer: The Bat! (v1.34a) S/N C3810D62 / Personal Reply-To: Monbebe Admin Organization: http://www.monbebe.net X-Priority: 3 (Normal) Message-ID: <17480.990801@monbebe.net> To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re[2]: probation period for new subscribers In-reply-To: References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > Someone on the list-managers mailing list asked: >> I'm using majordomo. Is there a way to set up a list so that >> messages from first-time/new subscribers would need to go >> through the list-owner for a set number of postings? ... Several MLM softwares as DOLIST or Lyris do this. Best regards, -- Technical Support http://www.monbebe.net Un site pour apprendre a etre parents From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 1 08:22:33 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id HAA24258; Sun, 1 Aug 1999 07:53:35 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail.MONBEBE.NET (mail.monbebe.net [216.25.42.193]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id HAA24251 for ; Sun, 1 Aug 1999 07:53:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Amiens-4-5.club-internet.fr [195.36.194.5] by mail.MONBEBE.NET with ESMTP (SMTPD32-5.01) id A0ED16501A0; Sun, 01 Aug 1999 10:59:57 EST Date: Sun, 1 Aug 1999 11:31:05 +0200 From: Monbebe Admin X-Mailer: The Bat! (v1.34a) S/N C3810D62 / Personal Reply-To: Monbebe Admin Organization: http://www.monbebe.net X-Priority: 3 (Normal) Message-ID: <10479.990801@monbebe.net> To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re[2]: per-user subject tag option (was Subject Prefix) In-reply-To: References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk J>> This is a good point :) Fortunately for Listar, it already does J>> duplicate tag removal (and pushes the tag to the front of the subject as J>> well :) > Ummm, isn't that the wrong behavior? I was under the impression that it > needed to go _after_ the 'Re:' so that replies look like replies > (i.e. start with 'Re:'). Yes totally. Netscape as well as Outlook will not sort the message correctly. Anyway this is always the error that did mailing list creator when they reply to quickly to this request. This is the third time I saw this for a MLM package ! :) Best regards, -- Technical Support http://www.monbebe.net Un site pour apprendre a etre parents From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 10 14:25:57 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA27696; Tue, 10 Aug 1999 13:51:25 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id NAA27684 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Tue, 10 Aug 1999 13:51:22 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mu.egroups.com (mu.egroups.com [207.138.41.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id UAA21392 for ; Sun, 8 Aug 1999 20:02:42 -0700 (PDT) From: matthew.simpson@erols.com Received: from [10.1.2.16] by mu.egroups.com with NNFMP; 09 Aug 1999 04:10:42 -0000 Date: Sun, 08 Aug 1999 20:10:38 -0700 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: eGroup - What's with the clause? Message-ID: <7olgre$r70p@eGroups.com> User-Agent: eGroups-EW/0.76 X-Mailer: www.eGroups.com Message Poster Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I'm considering moving my list of 500+ folks to eGroup. But I'm concerned about the first message in the attached clause of their legal agreement. Does this basically sign the list over to them? On the one hand, I think I'm reading that this allowed them to repost the material in any form, and that this ensures the channel of distribution. On the other hand, this first sentence doesn't have the for-the-end-users language that the later sentences have. What do you think? - Matthew Simpson - Listowner since 1990 YOUR PROPRIETARY RIGHTS You agree that upon posting any material within a group open to the public on the Service, you grant eGroups, and its successors and assigns, a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty free, perpetual, non-revocable license under your copyrights or other intellectual property rights, if any, in such material, to use, distribute, display, reproduce, and create derivative works from such material in any and all media, in any manner, in whole or part, without any duty to account to you. You further agree that upon posting any material within a private, members-only group on the Service, you grant eGroups, and its successors and assigns, a non-exclusive worldwide, royalty free, perpetual, non-revocable license under your copyrights or other intellectual property rights, if any, in such material to distribute, display, and reproduce such material to other members of that group. You also grant eGroups the right to authorize the downloading and printing in whole or in part of any material that you have posted to a group on the Service, by endusers for their personal use. From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 10 17:26:14 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA00496; Tue, 10 Aug 1999 16:48:53 -0700 (PDT) Received: from gull.prod.itd.earthlink.net (gull.prod.itd.earthlink.net [207.217.121.85]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id QAA00489 for ; Tue, 10 Aug 1999 16:48:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Default (pool094-cvx.ds51-ca-us.dialup.earthlink.net [209.179.146.94]) by gull.prod.itd.earthlink.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id QAA00891 for ; Tue, 10 Aug 1999 16:57:06 -0700 (PDT) Date: Tue, 10 Aug 1999 16:57:06 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199908102357.QAA00891@gull.prod.itd.earthlink.net> X-Sender: sbrooks@mail.earthlink.net X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Light Version 1.5.2 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Sam Brooks Subject: RE: eGroup - What's with the clause? Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk matthew.simpson@erols.com wrote: >concerned about the first message in the attached clause of their legal >agreement. Does this basically sign the list over to them? Reply: In essence. To me the key words are: royalty free, perpetual, non-revocable license That's like forever. No way, Matthew. Sam sbrooks@earthlink.net From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 10 18:43:59 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id SAA01542; Tue, 10 Aug 1999 18:10:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: from kachina.jetcafe.org (kachina.jetcafe.org [205.147.43.2]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id SAA01533 for ; Tue, 10 Aug 1999 18:10:07 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ee-nt (eckert@netcom11.netcom.com [192.100.81.121]) by kachina.jetcafe.org (8.9.1/8.9.1) with SMTP id SAA15689; Tue, 10 Aug 1999 18:18:17 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <3.0.5.32.19990810181951.00a43740@pop.climber.org> X-Sender: eckert@pop.climber.org X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.5 (32) Date: Tue, 10 Aug 1999 18:19:51 -0700 To: matthew.simpson@erols.com From: SRE Subject: Re: eGroup - What's with the clause? Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: <7olgre$r70p@eGroups.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >You agree that upon posting any material within a group open to the >public on the Service, you grant eGroups, and its successors and >assigns, a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty free, perpetual, >non-revocable license under your copyrights or other intellectual At 08:10 PM 8/8/99 -0700, matthew.simpson@erols.com wrote: >I'm considering moving my list of 500+ folks to eGroup. But I'm >concerned about the first message in the attached clause of their legal >agreement. Does this basically sign the list over to them? Yes, that's what it means. They can take posts from your subscribers and sell them as a database. They can sell the names of everyone who posted. They can distill your knowledge into a book and sell it. In no case can you ever tell them not to use the material in any way they see fit... and they don't pay you a dime for anything, ever. It's a bad deal. Find a real ISP (a little one like JetCafe.org or any number of great big ones). It's only 10 or 20 bucks a month for you to keep your rights. By the way, organizations (like the Sierra Club) that have email servers of their own are starting to write clauses like the one RETROACTIVELY after people set up lists on their server. Beware! SRE mailto:eckert@climber.org | http://www.climber.org/eckert/ Info on peak climbing email lists mailto:info@climber.org Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others. - Edward Abbey From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 10 19:28:54 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id SAA01670; Tue, 10 Aug 1999 18:21:26 -0700 (PDT) Received: from gva.net (MAIL.GVA.NET [216.80.135.3]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id SAA01663 for ; Tue, 10 Aug 1999 18:21:19 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199908110121.SAA01663@honor.greatcircle.com> Received: from default [216.80.135.10] by gva.net [216.80.135.3] with SMTP (MDaemon.v2.7.SP5.R) for ; Tue, 10 Aug 1999 21:40:03 -0400 From: "Bernie Cosell" Organization: Fantasy Farm Fibers To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Tue, 10 Aug 1999 21:23:38 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: eGroup - What's with the clause? Reply-to: bernie@fantasyfarm.com In-reply-to: <7olgre$r70p@eGroups.com> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.11) X-MDaemon-Deliver-To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM X-Return-Path: bernie@fantasyfarm.com Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On 8 Aug 99, at 20:10, matthew.simpson@erols.com wrote: > I'm considering moving my list of 500+ folks to eGroup. But I'm > concerned about the first message in the attached clause of their legal > agreement. Does this basically sign the list over to them? > YOUR PROPRIETARY RIGHTS > You agree that upon posting any material within a group open to the > public on the Service, you grant eGroups, and its successors and > assigns, a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty free, perpetual, > non-revocable license under your copyrights or other intellectual > property rights, if any, in such material, to use, distribute, display, > reproduce, and create derivative works from such material in any and > all media, in any manner, in whole or part, without any duty to account > to you. ... This looks like the stuff that was in the new GeoCities agreement when Yahoo took it over. I think your intutition is correct: IMO it is **WAY** overbroad and gives them **WAY** too many rights [for example, they have the right to select stuff from your list and publish it in a book without your permission]. The other thing is that this implies your granting to them rights you don't have [since the authors of the individual messages would still hold copyrights to their stuff] and so it would look like you would have to inform everyone who subscribes to your list of this aspect of the agreement and their acceding to join the list would be considered agreeing to those terms... If it were me, I wouldn't play their game [and I'd complain to them about it]. If they made a really attractive offer, then I'd seek a better- informed opinion either by consulting a lawyer directly or at the least checking out on the intellectual-propery newsgroup... /Bernie\ You further agree that upon posting any material within a > private, members-only group on the Service, you grant eGroups, and its > successors and assigns, a non-exclusive worldwide, royalty free, > perpetual, non-revocable license under your copyrights or other > intellectual property rights, if any, in such material to distribute, > display, and reproduce such material to other members of that group. > You also grant eGroups the right to authorize the downloading and > printing in whole or in part of any material that you have posted to a > group on the Service, by endusers for their personal use. > > > -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 10 22:26:01 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA04379; Tue, 10 Aug 1999 21:56:36 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id VAA04372 for ; Tue, 10 Aug 1999 21:56:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id WAA32524 ; Tue, 10 Aug 1999 22:04:57 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.19990810181951.00a43740@pop.climber.org> References: <3.0.5.32.19990810181951.00a43740@pop.climber.org> Date: Tue, 10 Aug 1999 22:02:29 -0700 To: SRE , matthew.simpson@erols.com From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: eGroup - What's with the clause? Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 6:19 PM -0700 8/10/99, SRE wrote: >>You agree that upon posting any material within a group open to the >>public on the Service, you grant eGroups, and its successors and >>assigns, a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty free, perpetual, >>non-revocable license under your copyrights or other intellectual > It's a bad deal. That's almost exactly the wording that Geocities tried to implement that got them in trouble. -- Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? ) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) + The Jedi that I admire most met up with Darth Maul and now he's toast... (Weird Al Yankovic - The Saga Begins) From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 11 07:47:59 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id HAA13454; Wed, 11 Aug 1999 07:30:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: from deepthought.armory.com (deepthought.armory.com [192.122.209.42]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id HAA13447 for ; Wed, 11 Aug 1999 07:30:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: from clovis by deepthought.armory.com id aa13768; 11 Aug 99 7:35 PDT Received: by clovis.nerdnosh.org (1.65/waf) via UUCP; Wed, 11 Aug 99 07:23:50 PST for list-managers@greatcircle.com To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: eGroup - the Sanity Clause... From: Tim Bowden Message-ID: Date: Wed, 11 Aug 99 07:13:05 PST In-Reply-To: <7olgre$r70p@eGroups.com> Organization: NERDNOSH - the story continues... Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk matthew.simpson@erols.com writes: > I'm considering moving my list of 500+ folks to eGroup. But I'm > concerned about the first message in the attached clause of their legal > agreement. Does this basically sign the list over to them? Just an attempt at looking at the other side before the onslaught of Privacy Proctors; let me say that I would not operate eGroup or any like service without a similar clause. If you have hundreds coming through your doors, you will have the dissatisfied, you will even have the unstable, and a standard Twit-Off Turn calls for the disabused dud to demand under legal threat all her/is treasures be removed on those premises. Another possibility (this one I haven't experienced) is a demand for "royalties" from their various maggot opusii. Would anyone here open up a list management operation without any sort of understanding about the goods posted? Would you, in this day and age, enter into any bargain at all without some agreement about the product? mailto:tcbowden@clovis.nerdnosh.org (Tim Bowden) Proud member of NERDNOSH (tm)! mailto:majordomo@story.nerdnosh org the command: subscribe nerdnosh From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 11 11:31:50 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA16418; Wed, 11 Aug 1999 11:12:41 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ivan.iecc.com (ivan.iecc.com [208.31.42.33]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id LAA16411 for ; Wed, 11 Aug 1999 11:12:35 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 25621 invoked by uid 100); 11 Aug 1999 14:21:01 -0400 Date: Wed, 11 Aug 1999 14:21:01 -0400 (EDT) From: John R Levine To: Tim Bowden cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: eGroup - the Sanity Clause... In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > > I'm considering moving my list of 500+ folks to eGroup. But I'm > > concerned about the first message in the attached clause of their legal > > agreement. Does this basically sign the list over to them? > > Just an attempt at looking at the other side before the onslaught > of Privacy Proctors; let me say that I would not operate eGroup > or any like service without a similar clause. Me neither, but the eGroups agreement is a typical piece of mindless legalese that was clearly written by a lawyer who thought it was his job to craft an agreement which was as one-sided in favor of his client as can be. It's not hard to write an agreement that protects the interests of the list host without requiring that users sign over complete rights to every bit of data that passes within 20 miles of them. Geocities backpedalled a lot, I don't see why eGroups couldn't as well. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47 From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 11 11:45:08 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA16379; Wed, 11 Aug 1999 11:08:44 -0700 (PDT) Received: from gva.net (MAIL.GVA.NET [216.80.135.3]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id LAA16372 for ; Wed, 11 Aug 1999 11:08:38 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199908111808.LAA16372@honor.greatcircle.com> Received: from default [216.80.135.10] by gva.net [216.80.135.3] with SMTP (MDaemon.v2.7.SP5.R) for ; Wed, 11 Aug 1999 14:26:46 -0400 From: "Bernie Cosell" Organization: Fantasy Farm Fibers To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Wed, 11 Aug 1999 14:14:09 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: eGroup - the Sanity Clause... Reply-to: bernie@fantasyfarm.com In-reply-to: References: <7olgre$r70p@eGroups.com> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.11) X-MDaemon-Deliver-To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM X-Return-Path: bernie@fantasyfarm.com Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On 11 Aug 99, at 7:13, Tim Bowden wrote: > matthew.simpson@erols.com writes: > > > I'm considering moving my list of 500+ folks to eGroup. But I'm > > concerned about the first message in the attached clause of their legal > > agreement. Does this basically sign the list over to them? > > Just an attempt at looking at the other side before the onslaught > of Privacy Proctors; let me say that I would not operate eGroup > or any like service without a similar clause. If you have hundreds > coming through your doors, you will have the dissatisfied, you will > even have the unstable, and a standard Twit-Off Turn calls for the > disabused dud to demand under legal threat all her/is treasures be > removed on those premises. Another possibility (this one I haven't > experienced) is a demand for "royalties" from their various maggot > opusii. > > Would anyone here open up a list management operation without any > sort of understanding about the goods posted? Would you, in this > day and age, enter into any bargain at all without some agreement > about the product? Of course not. But to run the MLM would I need an unrestricted, perpetual license? I think not. If the rights they were asking were _limited_ in some reasonable way I doubt there would be a problem [go look at the new Geocities license, for example]. No one is saying that there should be *NO* agreement nor understanding, but only that many of us think that that is **MUCH** broader than they need for any rational, business, or CYA purposes... they can get all the protection they need for their operation with a MUCH more limited license. /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 11 13:15:04 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA17844; Wed, 11 Aug 1999 12:57:06 -0700 (PDT) Received: from smtp2.vnet.net (smtp2.vnet.net [166.82.1.32]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id MAA17837 for ; Wed, 11 Aug 1999 12:57:01 -0700 (PDT) Received: from katie.vnet.net (katie.vnet.net [166.82.1.7]) by smtp2.vnet.net (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id QAA22861 for ; Wed, 11 Aug 1999 16:05:28 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (murr@localhost) by katie.vnet.net (8.9.1b+Sun/8.9.1) with ESMTP id QAA17114 for ; Wed, 11 Aug 1999 16:05:27 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 11 Aug 1999 16:05:26 -0400 (EDT) From: murr rhame To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: eGroup - the Sanity Clause... In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I'm curious how well the "agreement" would hold up in court. As far as I know, an author doesn't relinquish their copyright just because they post an item to a mailing list. I don't believe you can force someone to accept an agreement by making a one-sided declaration. If the subscribers have not formally accepted the proposal, how can it be binding? As an extreme example of this principle, if I declare that by reading this article, you now owe me $1,000,000.00US should I expect payment? No court would attempt to enforce my million dollar proposal unless I had formal proof that someone accepted my deal. - murr - From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 11 17:15:10 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA20821; Wed, 11 Aug 1999 16:52:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: from deepthought.armory.com (deepthought.armory.com [192.122.209.42]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id QAA20806 for ; Wed, 11 Aug 1999 16:52:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from clovis by deepthought.armory.com id aa28626; 11 Aug 99 16:59 PDT Received: by clovis.nerdnosh.org (1.65/waf) via UUCP; Wed, 11 Aug 99 16:53:19 PST for list-managers@greatcircle.com To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: eGroup - the Sanity Clause... From: Tim Bowden Message-ID: <5BLucF3w165w@clovis.nerdnosh.org> Date: Wed, 11 Aug 99 16:48:51 PST In-Reply-To: Organization: NERDNOSH - the story continues... Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk murr rhame writes: > I'm curious how well the "agreement" would hold up in court. As > far as I know, an author doesn't relinquish their copyright just > because they post an item to a mailing list. Say you sold an article to Scanlog, the print monthly. Then in a few months, whathell, you decided you wanted to sell it to Mosca, too. Should you be able to do that freely? Is Scanlog acting tyrannical in insisting they be the only forum for that particular contracted segment? They provided you with a stage; what rights accrue from that benefit? mailto:tcbowden@clovis.nerdnosh.org (Tim Bowden) Proud member of NERDNOSH (tm)! mailto:majordomo@story.nerdnosh org the command: subscribe nerdnosh From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 11 17:31:04 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA20818; Wed, 11 Aug 1999 16:52:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: from deepthought.armory.com (deepthought.armory.com [192.122.209.42]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id QAA20804 for ; Wed, 11 Aug 1999 16:52:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from clovis by deepthought.armory.com id aa28620; 11 Aug 99 16:59 PDT Received: by clovis.nerdnosh.org (1.65/waf) via UUCP; Wed, 11 Aug 99 16:48:06 PST for list-managers@greatcircle.com To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Too Tight Copyright? From: Tim Bowden Message-ID: Date: Wed, 11 Aug 99 16:40:07 PST In-Reply-To: <199908111808.LAA16372@honor.greatcircle.com> Organization: NERDNOSH - the story continues... Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Here are a couple of real-time scenarios, from the logs of NerdNosh. "Reginald is so complacent, he misinterpreted me and stole my watch. I demand all traces of my passing here be nulled, voided, removed by Thursday next or see you in court." "I want my stories removed. My husband just took out an AOL account." The copyright for the Nosh, as we have it written, gives the list the right to distribute to the members and store in our archives in perpetuity. There is a cloaking device available to disguise the IDs of Noshers, should they choose to use it. The writer may do what she wants regarding print publication (and several have, in books and magazines over the years). We ask there be no other online forum for the segments sent to us. This has, thank gawd, never been tested in court. Is it too restrictive? Does it read like eGroup to anyone? mailto:tcbowden@clovis.nerdnosh.org (Tim Bowden) Proud member of NERDNOSH (tm)! mailto:majordomo@story.nerdnosh org the command: subscribe nerdnosh From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 11 19:45:47 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA22678; Wed, 11 Aug 1999 19:23:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: from smtp2.vnet.net (smtp2.vnet.net [166.82.1.32]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id TAA22671 for ; Wed, 11 Aug 1999 19:23:00 -0700 (PDT) Received: from katie.vnet.net (katie.vnet.net [166.82.1.7]) by smtp2.vnet.net (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id WAA20546; Wed, 11 Aug 1999 22:31:26 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (murr@localhost) by katie.vnet.net (8.9.1b+Sun/8.9.1) with ESMTP id WAA27430; Wed, 11 Aug 1999 22:31:25 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 11 Aug 1999 22:31:24 -0400 (EDT) From: murr rhame To: Tim Bowden cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: eGroup - the Sanity Clause... In-Reply-To: <5BLucF3w165w@clovis.nerdnosh.org> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Wed, 11 Aug 1999, Tim Bowden wrote: > Say you sold an article to Scanlog, the print monthly. Then > in a few months, whathell, you decided you wanted to sell it > to Mosca, too. Should you be able to do that freely? Is > Scanlog acting tyrannical in insisting they be the only forum > for that particular contracted segment? They provided you > with a stage; what rights accrue from that benefit? Selling an item to one publication then selling it to another is not the same as posting to a mailing list at all. How much do you pay your subscribers for their posts to the mailing list? If I post an article to this mailing list, that I wrote entirely on my own, am I in any way restricted from posting the same article to another mailing list? Assuming that I haven't sold the rights to the article that I wrote and posted, am I not at liberty to sell MY article to a publication? - murr - From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 11 20:31:01 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id UAA23289; Wed, 11 Aug 1999 20:15:06 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ma-1.rootsweb.com (ma-1.rootsweb.com [209.192.148.153]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id UAA23274 for ; Wed, 11 Aug 1999 20:14:57 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from twp@localhost) by ma-1.rootsweb.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id XAA22059; Wed, 11 Aug 1999 23:23:07 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 11 Aug 1999 23:23:07 -0400 From: Tim Pierce To: murr rhame Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: eGroup - the Sanity Clause... Message-ID: <19990811232307.V13434@ma-1.rootsweb.com> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.1i In-Reply-To: ; from murr rhame on Wed, Aug 11, 1999 at 04:05:26PM -0400 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Wed, Aug 11, 1999 at 04:05:26PM -0400, murr rhame wrote: > I'm curious how well the "agreement" would hold up in court. As > far as I know, an author doesn't relinquish their copyright just > because they post an item to a mailing list. The eGroups TOS, as I read it, doesn't require you to relinquish your copyright. If it did, they could deny you the right to reuse your own words elsewhere, but it doesn't seem to do that. What they are claiming is permission to use messages posted on lists they host, and that you can't take this permission away from them. Whatever folks may think of this, it isn't exactly unreasonable: * If they didn't have permission to use the messages you post, then, well, they couldn't exactly run a mailing list, could they? * If you could take away that permission any time you please, they'd essentially be at the beck and call of every hothead on their lists -- any time some flake demanded that they pull all of the messages from their archives, they'd be legally bound to do it. If you don't have a gazillion dollars to throw at a high-end database system, that's likely to cost a considerable amount of staff time. The eGroups proposal is not uncharacteristic for the industry. You can probably find a better arrangement from a smaller list service provider, one which doesn't make content its bread and butter (although the service itself may suffer for lack of resources). > I don't believe you > can force someone to accept an agreement by making a one-sided > declaration. Welcome to the clickwrap world. -- Regards, Tim Pierce RootsWeb.com lead system admonsterator and Chief Hacking Officer From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 11 21:15:47 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id UAA23670; Wed, 11 Aug 1999 20:49:06 -0700 (PDT) Received: from deepthought.armory.com (deepthought.armory.com [192.122.209.42]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id UAA23663 for ; Wed, 11 Aug 1999 20:49:02 -0700 (PDT) Received: from clovis by deepthought.armory.com id aa01862; 11 Aug 99 20:57 PDT Received: by clovis.nerdnosh.org (1.65/waf) via UUCP; Wed, 11 Aug 99 20:24:10 PST for list-managers@greatcircle.com To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: eGroup - the Sanity Clause... From: Tim Bowden Message-ID: Date: Wed, 11 Aug 99 20:05:20 PST In-Reply-To: Organization: NERDNOSH - the story continues... Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk murr rhame writes: > Selling an item to one publication then selling it to another is > not the same as posting to a mailing list at all. How much do > you pay your subscribers for their posts to the mailing list? This turns the question on its head, I think. We inquire into the propriety of a resource, publication, forum demanding sole possession of what it is offered. I am looking to the contract itself, and remuneration is but a possible item of that document, for there is no inherent virtue universally conveyed, in love or print, by the passage of coin. I say there is nothing scandalous, unholy, or fattening about an entity declaring sovereignty over the offerings submitted to it. I say it happens all the time, in publishing, film, academics, religion, and matrimony. Each of us has the inalienable right to withhold our submissions if we take the burden of that degree of control as too onerous, yet to wail against the very idea is like the boy who cried against the wind. He contended much to attain little. mailto:tcbowden@clovis.nerdnosh.org (Tim Bowden) Proud member of NERDNOSH (tm)! mailto:majordomo@story.nerdnosh org the command: subscribe nerdnosh From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 11 21:30:48 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA23912; Wed, 11 Aug 1999 21:07:02 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id VAA23901 for ; Wed, 11 Aug 1999 21:06:53 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id VAA36672 ; Wed, 11 Aug 1999 21:15:30 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Date: Wed, 11 Aug 1999 21:15:13 -0700 To: murr rhame , Tim Bowden From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: eGroup - the Sanity Clause... Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 10:31 PM -0400 8/11/99, murr rhame wrote: > Selling an item to one publication then selling it to another is > not the same as posting to a mailing list at all. you're missing the point, Murr. He's talking about the contractual aspects, not the content. Content is irrelevant. -- Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? ) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) + The Jedi that I admire most met up with Darth Maul and now he's toast... (Weird Al Yankovic - The Saga Begins) From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 11 21:44:22 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA23911; Wed, 11 Aug 1999 21:07:02 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id VAA23896 for ; Wed, 11 Aug 1999 21:06:52 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id VAA36662 ; Wed, 11 Aug 1999 21:15:29 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <5BLucF3w165w@clovis.nerdnosh.org> References: <5BLucF3w165w@clovis.nerdnosh.org> Date: Wed, 11 Aug 1999 21:15:14 -0700 To: Tim Bowden , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: eGroup - the Sanity Clause... Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 4:48 PM -0800 8/11/99, Tim Bowden wrote: > Say you sold an article to Scanlog, the print monthly. Then in a few > months, whathell, you decided you wanted to sell it to Mosca, too. > Should you be able to do that freely? Depends on what rights you sold. If you sold All Rights, then you're wrong. If you sell first rights and secondary rights, it's perfectly legal. but in the publishing world, if a publisher buys all rights, they pay more (well, the honest publishers do). In my time, I've sold a number of pieces, including some all-rights deals. There is no single answer here, because it depends on what the agreements are. and it's up to the author to (a) know what rights they still own and what they don't (and don't sell what they don't own), and (b) for the author not to sell away rights they aren't willing to give up for the price. (actually, the story we sold all rights to not only made us the most money up front, it ALSO has generated the best royalties, since DC comics has seen fit to reprint it at least three times. They're good enough to pay royalties on it, which many all-rights deals don't allow for, but only they can decide what to do with it (or not), so even if I somehow find a way to publish a "best of" collection, I'd have to buy rights back to use it...) -- Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? ) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) + The Jedi that I admire most met up with Darth Maul and now he's toast... (Weird Al Yankovic - The Saga Begins) From list-managers-owner Thu Aug 12 08:35:06 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id IAA05096; Thu, 12 Aug 1999 08:23:45 -0700 (PDT) Received: from llama.swcp.com (llama.swcp.com [198.59.115.19]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id IAA05088 for ; Thu, 12 Aug 1999 08:23:39 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from lazlo@localhost) by llama.swcp.com (8.8.5/8.8.0) id JAA20678 for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM; Thu, 12 Aug 1999 09:32:14 -0600 (MDT) Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1999 09:32:14 -0600 From: Ernie Longmire/Lazlo Nibble To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: eGroup - the Sanity Clause... Message-ID: <19990812093214.A20577@swcp.com> Mail-Followup-To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM References: <19990811232307.V13434@ma-1.rootsweb.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.1i In-Reply-To: <19990811232307.V13434@ma-1.rootsweb.com>; from Tim Pierce on Wed, Aug 11, 1999 at 11:23:07PM -0400 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Wed, Aug 11, 1999 at 11:23:07PM -0400, Tim Pierce wrote: > What they are claiming is permission to use messages posted on lists > they host, and that you can't take this permission away from them. They are claiming a good deal more than that (the right to create derivative works in any and all media for starters). I don't have a problem with them setting up an agreement that gives them legal protection to provide the service they're providing: distributing and archiving mailing list messages. Unfortunately they are drawing a much wider circle than that. -- Lazlo Nibble - lazlo@studio-nibble.com - http://www.studio-nibble.com this message powered by level 42 - running in the family -- From list-managers-owner Thu Aug 12 11:50:14 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA07806; Thu, 12 Aug 1999 11:39:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: from bp.ucs.usl.edu (bp.ucs.usl.edu [130.70.40.36]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA07799 for ; Thu, 12 Aug 1999 11:39:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: from usl.edu (ish.usl.edu [130.70.53.59]) by bp.ucs.usl.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1/ucs-server_1.3) with ESMTP id NAA24547; Thu, 12 Aug 1999 13:48:00 -0500 (CDT) Message-ID: <37B316FB.B973F24@usl.edu> Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1999 13:48:27 -0500 From: Istvan Berkeley Organization: Philosophy, USL X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.61 [en] (Win95; I) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Ernie Longmire/Lazlo Nibble CC: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: eGroup - the Sanity Clause... References: <19990811232307.V13434@ma-1.rootsweb.com> <19990812093214.A20577@swcp.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hi there, It seems to me that there may also be a copyright problem with the agreement, as stated. Although I am not a lawyer, my understanding of the situation is that the author of a particular e-mail message holds the copyright of the content of the message. If this is the case, then a listowner is not in the position to sign away rights he/she does not possess, unless somehow or other, people posting to a list explicitly assign the copyright of their messages to the listowner, or agree that their message is in the public domain. All the best, Istvan PHILOSOP Moderator -- Istvan S. N. Berkeley Ph.D Philosophy E-mail: istvan@usl.edu The University of Southwestern Louisiana P.O. Box 43770 Tel: +1 318 482-6807 Lafayette, LA 70504-3770 Fax: +1 318 482-6195 USA http://www.ucs.usl.edu/~isb9112 From list-managers-owner Thu Aug 12 12:34:59 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA08424; Thu, 12 Aug 1999 12:23:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: from kachina.jetcafe.org (kachina.jetcafe.org [205.147.43.2]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id MAA08417 for ; Thu, 12 Aug 1999 12:23:22 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ee-nt (eckert@netcom12.netcom.com [192.100.81.124]) by kachina.jetcafe.org (8.9.1/8.9.1) with SMTP id MAA27284; Thu, 12 Aug 1999 12:31:49 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <3.0.5.32.19990812115454.00a51ac0@pop.climber.org> X-Sender: eckert@pop.climber.org X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.5 (32) Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1999 11:54:54 -0700 To: Tim Bowden From: SRE Subject: Re: eGroup - the Sanity Clause... Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: References: <7olgre$r70p@eGroups.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 07:13 AM 8/11/99 PST, Tim Bowden wrote: >Would anyone here open up a list management operation without any >sort of understanding about the goods posted? No, probably not. You don't have to go as far as eGroup, however. Have a look at http://www.climber.org/lists/climber.org-rules.txt for a kinder and gentler approach. mailto:admin@climber.org | http://www.climber.org/ Overall peak climber info mailto:info@climber.org From list-managers-owner Thu Aug 12 13:34:59 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA09228; Thu, 12 Aug 1999 13:28:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id NAA09221 for ; Thu, 12 Aug 1999 13:28:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (A17-216-27-198.apple.com [17.216.27.198]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id NAA250034 ; Thu, 12 Aug 1999 13:36:02 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <37B316FB.B973F24@usl.edu> References: <19990811232307.V13434@ma-1.rootsweb.com> <19990812093214.A20577@swcp.com> <37B316FB.B973F24@usl.edu> Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1999 13:36:30 -0700 To: Istvan Berkeley , Ernie Longmire/Lazlo Nibble From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: eGroup - the Sanity Clause... Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 1:48 PM -0500 8/12/99, Istvan Berkeley wrote: > It seems to me that there may also be a copyright problem with the > agreement, as stated. Although I am not a lawyer, my understanding of > the situation is that the author of a particular e-mail message holds > the copyright of the content of the message. Probably not an issue. The original author holds copyright to the message, but the list owner owns a copyright on the collection of messages that is "the mailing list". By posting to the list, the original author is assiging the right to redistribute to that list, in a non-exclusive way. And then eGroups is assigning to itself a license based on the collection's copyright. It's all pretty straightforward here. The original author could, I suppose, create and try to enforce a copyright on the listowner that would conflict with the eGroups license, but the end result would likely be that the list owner would simply have to ban the user from posting to the list, or remove the list from eGroups to comply, and I'd say it's very, very doubtful a court would upholod such a copyright since the user was unilaterally attempting to circumvent a known license. I've had situations like this before on lists I've run, mostly where pro-Apple people have attempted to post messsages on mail lists banning their distribution to any microsoft site. And they always get this really weird look on their face when I tell them the only way I can enforce that is to ban them from the lists, so they can either remove it or stop using my mail lists. But since I can't guarantee their copyright restrictions will be upheld, the only way I can manage MY legal liability is to get them to remove the restriction, or not allow them to use my lists.... Not all of them take that in a teambuilding way, unfortunately... -- Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? ) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) + The Jedi that I admire most met up with Darth Maul and now he's toast... (Weird Al Yankovic - The Saga Begins) From list-managers-owner Thu Aug 12 17:19:58 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA12363; Thu, 12 Aug 1999 16:30:47 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id QAA12327 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Thu, 12 Aug 1999 16:30:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: from llama.swcp.com (llama.swcp.com [198.59.115.19]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id IAA14416 for ; Wed, 11 Aug 1999 08:58:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from lazlo@localhost) by llama.swcp.com (8.8.5/8.8.0) id KAA06419 for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM; Wed, 11 Aug 1999 10:07:02 -0600 (MDT) Date: Wed, 11 Aug 1999 10:07:02 -0600 From: Ernie Longmire/Lazlo Nibble To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: eGroup - the Sanity Clause... Message-ID: <19990811100702.A6281@swcp.com> Mail-Followup-To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM References: <7olgre$r70p@eGroups.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.1i In-Reply-To: ; from Tim Bowden on Wed, Aug 11, 1999 at 07:13:05AM -0800 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Wed, Aug 11, 1999 at 07:13:05AM -0800, Tim Bowden wrote: > Just an attempt at looking at the other side before the onslaught > of Privacy Proctors; let me say that I would not operate eGroup > or any like service without a similar clause. If you have hundreds > coming through your doors, you will have the dissatisfied, you will > even have the unstable, and a standard Twit-Off Turn calls for the > disabused dud to demand under legal threat all her/is treasures be > removed on those premises. It's possible for eGroup to protect their ability to legally propagate and archive the list without demanding a license to distribute its contents in any medium they choose from now until the sun cools to a cinder. In my eyes the appropriate license for a site like eGroup would be one that tightly encircles the functions that are necessary for their site to function normally: 1) They have a right to redistribute messages submitted to the list via email to whoever is subscribed to the list at the time 2) They have a right to create and maintain a publicly-viewable archive of the list until the list owner asks them to take it down 3) They have a right to stick their ads on the outgoing messages or the archive 4) They require the list owner to make these terms known to the list subscribers with the understanding that if the subscribers do not agree to the terms they should not subscribe to the list I would also allow subscribers to tag their messages in a way that prevented them from being added to the archives... -- Lazlo Nibble - lazlo@studio-nibble.com - http://www.studio-nibble.com -- From list-managers-owner Thu Aug 12 17:49:56 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id RAA13420; Thu, 12 Aug 1999 17:46:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ivan.iecc.com (ivan.iecc.com [208.31.42.33]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id RAA13413 for ; Thu, 12 Aug 1999 17:46:44 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 3716 invoked by uid 100); 12 Aug 1999 20:55:24 -0400 Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1999 20:55:23 -0400 (EDT) From: John R Levine To: Chuq Von Rospach cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: eGroup - the Sanity Clause... In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > messages that is "the mailing list". By posting to the list, the > original author is assiging the right to redistribute to that list, > in a non-exclusive way. And then eGroups is assigning to itself a > license based on the collection's copyright. Hi, it's me again. I think this argument is backward -- I agree that list members can't place wierd restrictions on their individual messages, but in this case eGroups is demanding from the list owner rights that it's not at all clear that any of his list members have assigned him. If you send messages to a mailing list, you clearly are permitting redistribution and archiving, but it's not at all clear that you're permitting third parties to sell CD-ROMs with your stuff. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47 From list-managers-owner Thu Aug 12 20:20:03 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id UAA15366; Thu, 12 Aug 1999 20:07:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id UAA15359 for ; Thu, 12 Aug 1999 20:07:01 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id UAA12032 ; Thu, 12 Aug 1999 20:15:54 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1999 20:15:07 -0700 To: John R Levine , Chuq Von Rospach From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: eGroup - the Sanity Clause... Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 8:55 PM -0400 8/12/99, John R Levine wrote: > Hi, it's me again. I think this argument is backward -- I agree that list > members can't place wierd restrictions on their individual messages, but in > this case eGroups is demanding from the list owner rights that it's not at > all clear that any of his list members have assigned him. If you sign up for a list that has those licenses attached, then you are by your agreeing to be a part of it agreeing to the licenses. It'd be different if those licenses were added retroactively, but if you sign up for a list, you're agreeing to abide by the list rules, no? So I don't see this as an issue -- a user voluntarily agrees to the licenses by signing up (and ignorance or refusing to read the rules doesn't count as a reason to invalidate them....) chuq -- Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? ) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) + The Jedi that I admire most met up with Darth Maul and now he's toast... (Weird Al Yankovic - The Saga Begins) From list-managers-owner Thu Aug 12 20:35:15 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id UAA15545; Thu, 12 Aug 1999 20:23:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ma-1.rootsweb.com (ma-1.rootsweb.com [209.192.148.153]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id UAA15538 for ; Thu, 12 Aug 1999 20:22:47 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from twp@localhost) by ma-1.rootsweb.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id XAA34129; Thu, 12 Aug 1999 23:31:09 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1999 23:31:09 -0400 From: Tim Pierce To: John R Levine Cc: Chuq Von Rospach , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: eGroup - the Sanity Clause... Message-ID: <19990812233109.R13434@ma-1.rootsweb.com> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.1i In-Reply-To: ; from John R Levine on Thu, Aug 12, 1999 at 08:55:23PM -0400 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Thu, Aug 12, 1999 at 08:55:23PM -0400, John R Levine wrote: > > I agree that list > members can't place wierd restrictions on their individual messages, but in > this case eGroups is demanding from the list owner rights that it's not at > all clear that any of his list members have assigned him. The eGroups AUP seems pretty clearly directed at all of its users, not just the listowners. The `proprietary rights' clause says, `You agree that upon posting any material within a group...' Obviously it's not the listowner who's posting the material, so the `you' here is the individual user. > If you send > messages to a mailing list, you clearly are permitting redistribution and > archiving, but it's not at all clear that you're permitting third parties to > sell CD-ROMs with your stuff. Maybe, but you still have to be careful. If you don't reserve the right to put archives into "other media," then you can't put them up on the Web, for example. Can I cut a CD-ROM of our list archives and give it away as a conference freebie? Some people seem to think that it's okay as long as we're losing money. This year's sensible restriction often turns into next year's shortsighted mistake. The battle for preventing CD-ROM redistribution was pretty much lost when Walnut Creek started putting news.answers and comp.sources on CDs. -- Regards, Tim Pierce RootsWeb.com lead system admonsterator and Chief Hacking Officer From list-managers-owner Thu Aug 12 21:19:15 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA16105; Thu, 12 Aug 1999 21:13:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id VAA16098 for ; Thu, 12 Aug 1999 21:13:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id VAA06266 ; Thu, 12 Aug 1999 21:22:08 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <19990812233109.R13434@ma-1.rootsweb.com> References: <19990812233109.R13434@ma-1.rootsweb.com> Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1999 21:20:06 -0700 To: Tim Pierce , John R Levine From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: eGroup - the Sanity Clause... Cc: Chuq Von Rospach , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 11:31 PM -0400 8/12/99, Tim Pierce wrote: > Maybe, but you still have to be careful. If you don't reserve the > right to put archives into "other media," then you can't put them up > on the Web, for example. Can I cut a CD-ROM of our list archives and > give it away as a conference freebie? Some people seem to think that > it's okay as long as we're losing money. Rule 1 of copyright infringment: money has nothing to do with infringement (it does, however, have lots to do with recovering damages, but lets leave that out of this. but you can infringe a copyright without incurring recoverable damages...). Again, I'll fall into the realm of implied consent -- if I have public archives of my lists available and advertised when you sign up, you're agreeing to be stored in them. but no, that doesn't mean I can generate a CD-Rom of the archives, because there's no implied or explicit licensing of that. And if for some reason I chose to do so, I could change the list agreements, but IMHO, not retroactively. And down that road lies a real rats nest -- I could, I suppose, ask the list permission and take a majority view of the sense of the list, but would that override an individual's rights to be removed from the published archive? And what about users who've left the list so can't be asked? Nope. I'm not going there..... > This year's sensible restriction often turns into next year's > shortsighted mistake. The battle for preventing CD-ROM redistribution > was pretty much lost when Walnut Creek started putting news.answers > and comp.sources on CDs. Depends. SFWA just won a major victory against Wizards of the Coast, who tried to do a CD compilation of TSR's Dragon magazine without paying subsidary rights to authors. And after much gnashing of teeth and wailing and whining, WotC caved and agreed to pay authors for re-use of the material. Depends on what the agreements are, and who's willing to fight for what, it's far from a lost cause. On usenet, however, I can't believe that anyone posts to USENET without making the implicit assumption that the material is public domain (not in legal fact, but in practical reality) -- because the distribution is so wide, unrestricted and random taht you really have no hope of proving in a court that anyone's usage of the material is against the intent of a USENET posting. Barring explicit copyright restrictions on a USENET posting, you're granting unrevocable unlimited rights to that message, because that is really how USENET is defined. And anyone who believes otherwise is trying to butter both sides of his bread, and complaining that his fingers get greasy... IMHO, of course. -- Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? ) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) + The Jedi that I admire most met up with Darth Maul and now he's toast... (Weird Al Yankovic - The Saga Begins) From list-managers-owner Thu Aug 12 22:49:19 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id WAA17191; Thu, 12 Aug 1999 22:42:59 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id WAA17184 for ; Thu, 12 Aug 1999 22:42:53 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id WAA24148 ; Thu, 12 Aug 1999 22:51:47 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <19990812233109.R13434@ma-1.rootsweb.com> References: <19990812233109.R13434@ma-1.rootsweb.com> Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1999 22:21:54 -0700 To: Tim Pierce , John R Levine From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: eGroup - the Sanity Clause... Cc: Chuq Von Rospach , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 11:31 PM -0400 8/12/99, Tim Pierce wrote: > The eGroups AUP seems pretty clearly directed at all of its users, not > just the listowners. But John pointed something out to me privately -- go register for an eGroups account. Nowhere in the registration process do they refer you to their end user agreements. It's hidden underneath an undersized footnote called "legal". Is there an expectation that a user registering for an account would know to go looking under "legal" for the rules? I wouldn't want to be the lawyer defending eGroups if push comes to shove on that. Especially given that they could avoid that problem with a one paragraph note on the registration page that says "by registering with our service, you agree to...." with a hotlink to their legal page. but that's missing, so there's a serious information disconnect here. Nowhere do they tell you waht you're agreeing to. Maybe it's enforcable. Maybe not. I sure wouldn't do it that way, though (and actually, I'm glad this came up, since I'm designing some stuff where keeping that in mind will be quite useful). -- Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? ) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) + The Jedi that I admire most met up with Darth Maul and now he's toast... (Weird Al Yankovic - The Saga Begins) From list-managers-owner Thu Aug 12 23:36:43 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA17622; Thu, 12 Aug 1999 23:19:04 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ma-1.rootsweb.com (ma-1.rootsweb.com [209.192.148.153]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id XAA17591 for ; Thu, 12 Aug 1999 23:18:51 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from twp@localhost) by ma-1.rootsweb.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id CAA35712; Fri, 13 Aug 1999 02:27:20 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 13 Aug 1999 02:27:20 -0400 From: Tim Pierce To: Chuq Von Rospach Cc: John R Levine , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: eGroup - the Sanity Clause... Message-ID: <19990813022720.X13434@ma-1.rootsweb.com> References: <19990812233109.R13434@ma-1.rootsweb.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.1i In-Reply-To: ; from Chuq Von Rospach on Thu, Aug 12, 1999 at 10:21:54PM -0700 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Thu, Aug 12, 1999 at 10:21:54PM -0700, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > At 11:31 PM -0400 8/12/99, Tim Pierce wrote: > > > The eGroups AUP seems pretty clearly directed at all of its users, not > > just the listowners. > > But John pointed something out to me privately -- go register for an > eGroups account. Nowhere in the registration process do they refer > you to their end user agreements. It's hidden underneath an > undersized footnote called "legal". You're right, that's a major information disconnect. The TOS page includes a bunch of language about "by clicking on the Accept button, you agree, etc." and yet there are no form buttons there. It's as if they had intended to put this text on the account registration page and just forgot. I wonder if they even realize it. -- Regards, Tim Pierce RootsWeb.com lead system admonsterator and Chief Hacking Officer From list-managers-owner Thu Aug 12 23:49:24 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA17719; Thu, 12 Aug 1999 23:31:55 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id XAA17712 for ; Thu, 12 Aug 1999 23:31:50 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id XAA19706 ; Thu, 12 Aug 1999 23:40:45 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <19990813022720.X13434@ma-1.rootsweb.com> References: <19990812233109.R13434@ma-1.rootsweb.com> <19990813022720.X13434@ma-1.rootsweb.com> Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1999 23:40:16 -0700 To: Tim Pierce , Chuq Von Rospach From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: eGroup - the Sanity Clause... Cc: John R Levine , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 2:27 AM -0400 8/13/99, Tim Pierce wrote: > I wonder if they even realize it. (shrug). I thought about sending them e-mail, then decided I wasn't their lawyer. I have my own barn to muck, and sending a message like that seems too much like offering a legal opinion for this layman to feel comfortable with. If their legal people approved that, who am I to say they're wrong? They may well have decided to accept the disconnect and accept the risks to keep their signup as simple as possible. who knows? Hopefully they do. (of course, if the page changes next week....) -- Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? ) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) + The Jedi that I admire most met up with Darth Maul and now he's toast... (Weird Al Yankovic - The Saga Begins) From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 18 12:51:38 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA08091; Wed, 18 Aug 1999 12:44:33 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [192.107.175.229] (dns-west.osti.gov [192.107.175.229]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id MAA08084 for ; Wed, 18 Aug 1999 12:44:28 -0700 (PDT) From: Doug_LaVerne@ccmail.osti.gov Received: from mailgate.osti.gov by [192.107.175.229] via smtpd (for honor.greatcircle.com [198.102.244.44]) with SMTP; 18 Aug 1999 19:54:09 UT Received: from ccmail.osti.gov by mailgate.osti.gov (PMDF V5.2-32 #34298) id <0FGO00201FBRGY@mailgate.osti.gov> for list-managers@GreatCircle.com; Wed, 18 Aug 1999 15:55:10 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 18 Aug 1999 15:50 -0400 (EDT) Subject: ML Training & Documentation To: list-managers@GreatCircle.com Message-id: <0FGO00209FBYGY@mailgate.osti.gov> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Does anyone know of sources of training in & documentation of Mailing Lists beyond the obvious? There's plenty of training in Java, Oracle, ERP, etc. etc., but what of ML? Is it the backwater it seems to be? General training in mail systems, at least UNIX mail systems, may also be needed. We recently went from (Listproc) 6.0c to 6.0d. We have problems with performance & undelivered messages. So far I have found only the O'Reilly book "Managing Mailing Lists", 3/1998, ISBN 1-56592-259-X, vendor/author documentation such as man pages & manuals, and listowner/admin discussion groups such as this. The O'Reilly book is a godsend, but in a way is intermediate to beginner and only mildly useful for real world problems. Vendor /author documentation and discussion groups are often hard to use for various reasons. What is needed is information that hits the ground running so the administrator can. Thanks in advance, D. LaVerne, USDOE/OSTI Mailing Lists Support & Admin. From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 18 13:50:17 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA08854; Wed, 18 Aug 1999 13:44:26 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [192.107.175.229] (dns-west.osti.gov [192.107.175.229]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id NAA08847 for ; Wed, 18 Aug 1999 13:44:21 -0700 (PDT) From: Doug_LaVerne@ccmail.osti.gov Received: from mailgate.osti.gov by [192.107.175.229] via smtpd (for honor.greatcircle.com [198.102.244.44]) with SMTP; 18 Aug 1999 20:54:03 UT Received: from ccmail.osti.gov by mailgate.osti.gov (PMDF V5.2-32 #34298) id <0FGO00301I3RB4@mailgate.osti.gov> for list-managers@GreatCircle.com; Wed, 18 Aug 1999 16:55:04 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 18 Aug 1999 16:49 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Fwd:Re[2]: ML Documentation & Training To: list-managers@GreatCircle.com Message-id: <0FGO00307I3SB4@mailgate.osti.gov> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN Content-description: TEXT.TXT Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk It is unfortunate that I placed "we went from 6c to 6d" next to "we have problems" below. The two were not intended to sound related. Load on the relevant Unix platform or setting up a lightly loaded platform is a problem, perhaps the main problem, and something to be solved by Systems personnel--who are themselves too loaded with even higher priorities; in any case, I am tasked to find workarounds and solutions, potentially including training etc. in MLs along the way. Thanks in advance, DGL ____________________Reply Separator____________________ Subject: Re: ML Documentation & Training Author: tasos@boldfish.com Date: 99/08/18 4:00 PM Doug_LaVerne@ccmail.osti.gov wrote: > Does anyone know of sources of training in & documentation of Mailing Lists > beyond the obvious? There's plenty of training in Java, Oracle, ERP, etc. etc. , > but what of ML? Is it the backwater it seems to be? General training in mail > systems, at least UNIX mail systems, may also be needed. > > We recently went from (Listproc) 6.0c to 6.0d. We have problems with performan ce > & undelivered messages. you are probably missing something... 6.0d is only bug fixes... > > > So far I have found only the O'Reilly book "Managing Mailing Lists", 3/1998, > ISBN 1-56592-259-X, vendor/author documentation such as man pages & manuals, a nd > listowner/admin discussion groups such as this. > > The O'Reilly book is a godsend, but in a way is intermediate to beginner and > only mildly useful for real world problems. Vendor /author documentation and > discussion groups are often hard to use for various reasons. What is needed is > information that hits the ground running so the administrator can. > > Thanks in advance, D. LaVerne, USDOE/OSTI Mailing Lists Support & Admin. Forward item: ---------------------------- Forwarded with Changes --------------------------- From: Doug LaVerne at OSTIPO Date: 8/18/99 4:17PM To: tasos@boldfish.com at INTERNET To: unix-listproc@emailsol.com at INTERNET Subject: Re[2]: ML Documentation & Training ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 18 17:05:08 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA11899; Wed, 18 Aug 1999 16:56:56 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ivan.iecc.com (ivan.iecc.com [208.31.42.33]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id QAA11892 for ; Wed, 18 Aug 1999 16:56:50 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 8141 invoked by uid 100); 18 Aug 1999 20:06:32 -0400 Date: Wed, 18 Aug 1999 20:06:32 -0400 (EDT) From: John R Levine To: Doug_LaVerne@ccmail.osti.gov cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.com Subject: Re: ML Training & Documentation In-Reply-To: <0FGO00209FBYGY@mailgate.osti.gov> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > Does anyone know of sources of training in & documentation of Mailing Lists > beyond the obvious? I've also noticed that other than the O'Reilly book there's essentially nothing on mailing lists. It's one of the topics that's on my list to do a book about. Is there really enough demand for list manager training to support courses? If you can't round up a couple of hundred people (total, not all in one room) you're not likely to pay the cost of course development. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47 From list-managers-owner Thu Aug 19 07:49:33 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id HAA24496; Thu, 19 Aug 1999 07:34:54 -0700 (PDT) Received: from imo16.mx.aol.com (imo16.mx.aol.com [198.81.17.6]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id HAA24489 for ; Thu, 19 Aug 1999 07:34:47 -0700 (PDT) From: Rtnmi@aol.com Received: from Rtnmi@aol.com by imo16.mx.aol.com (mail_out_v22.4.) id oFHSa00252 (4214) for ; Thu, 19 Aug 1999 10:43:51 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: Date: Thu, 19 Aug 1999 10:43:50 EDT Subject: Re: List-Managers-Digest V8 #155 To: List-Managers@greatcircle.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Windows AOL sub 29 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Our thanks to the List manager and all those who support this list. We expect it to be a real blessing to our ministry. We are very new to running our own programs to run mailing lists. We have been managing our mailing list from another Internet Site that does the list for you. All we have to do is goto the website and send a message. However now in our search to find a program to run on our Windows 95 operating system for us to have more control over the environment that our members are subjected to (by having our own mailing list program) we came upon this list. Looks as though there is a more official way of doing this through this thing called Majorodomo. But I just learned how to spell PERL. So I am in need of much information. Does anyone know if PERL will run on Windows 95. Robert and Darla Autry Authors and Founders Revive The Nations Ministries International From list-managers-owner Fri Aug 20 23:33:33 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA20134; Fri, 20 Aug 1999 23:23:12 -0700 (PDT) Received: from windlord.stanford.edu (windlord.Stanford.EDU [171.64.12.23]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id XAA20127 for ; Fri, 20 Aug 1999 23:23:08 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 25432 invoked by uid 50); 21 Aug 1999 06:33:14 -0000 To: Rtnmi@aol.com Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: List-Managers-Digest V8 #155 References: From: Russ Allbery In-Reply-To: Rtnmi@aol.com's message of "Thu, 19 Aug 1999 10:43:50 EDT" Date: 20 Aug 1999 23:33:14 -0700 Message-ID: Lines: 13 X-Mailer: Gnus v5.4.66/Emacs 19.34 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Rtnmi writes: > Looks as though there is a more official way of doing this through this > thing called Majorodomo. But I just learned how to spell PERL. So I am > in need of much information. Does anyone know if PERL will run on > Windows 95. Perl will run fine on Windows 95, but Majordomo won't. It makes some Unix-based assumptions. It's possible that someone has ported it -- you can ask on majordomo-users@greatcircle.com -- but I doubt it. -- Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) From list-managers-owner Sat Aug 21 06:33:33 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id GAA26693; Sat, 21 Aug 1999 06:31:04 -0700 (PDT) Received: from imo16.mx.aol.com (imo16.mx.aol.com [198.81.17.6]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id GAA26686 for ; Sat, 21 Aug 1999 06:30:57 -0700 (PDT) From: Rtnmi@aol.com Received: from Rtnmi@aol.com by imo16.mx.aol.com (mail_out_v22.4.) id oXIDa00254 (4215) for ; Sat, 21 Aug 1999 09:41:02 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <2538d66b.24f0066e@aol.com> Date: Sat, 21 Aug 1999 09:41:02 EDT Subject: Re: List-Managers-Digest V8 #157 To: List-Managers@greatcircle.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: AOL 4.0 for Windows 95 sub 22 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk It was suggested over on the listmanagers list that we confirm an answer to our question over here so I am. If someone would answer this question we would surely appreciate it. I have been looking for a program so that we can run our mailing list from our computers here instead of on a server and have to subject our members to a lot of ads and everchanging environments. Then we found Majordomo in a search, which led us to Great Cirle. We found many programs that promise to do everthing by make coffee. However experience has taught me to ask the pros( users) of a thing before acting on getting it. So I need to know if my assumption is correct about Majordomo. It looks as though there is a more official way of doing this through Majorodomo. But I just learned how to spell PERL. So I am in need of much information. <<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>> Here is one answer that I have so far Perl will run fine on Windows 95, but Majordomo won't. It makes some Unix-based assumptions. It's possible that someone has ported it -- you can ask on majordomo-users@greatcircle.com -- but I doubt it. From list-managers-owner Sat Aug 21 07:18:33 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id HAA27013; Sat, 21 Aug 1999 07:15:58 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ifolk.iserver.net (ifolk.iserver.net [192.41.44.203]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id HAA27006 for ; Sat, 21 Aug 1999 07:15:51 -0700 (PDT) Received: from patroon ([160.43.47.9]) by ifolk.iserver.net (8.8.5) id KAA18343; Sat, 21 Aug 1999 10:25:57 -0400 (EDT) From: "Tom Neff" To: Subject: Re: Majordomo on Win32? Date: Sat, 21 Aug 1999 10:26:05 -0400 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) In-Reply-To: <199908210800.BAA20994@honor.greatcircle.com> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2314.1300 Importance: Normal Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Somewhat to my surprise, since almost everything else has been :), there doesn't seem to be a working port of MJ for Win32. I suspect the free services like egroups have taken most of the steam out of the urge to port it. By the way, for answers to questions of the form "Has XXXXX been ported...?", http://sourceware.cygnus.com/cygwin/ is a great source for many, many Unix things ported to Win32. Worth bookmarking, and Cygwin32 itself (including an excellent Perl) is the place to start if you plan to do some porting of your own. Since this question is addressed in the Majordomo FAQ, I sure hope everyone here has glanced through it: http://www.greatcircle.com/majordomo/FAQ.html Rtnmi writes: > Looks as though there is a more official way of doing this through this > thing called Majorodomo. But I just learned how to spell PERL. So I am > in need of much information. Does anyone know if PERL will run on > Windows 95. From list-managers-owner Sat Aug 21 09:49:43 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id JAA28130; Sat, 21 Aug 1999 09:34:29 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ntcorp.dn.net (ntcorp.dn.net [207.226.172.79]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id JAA28121 for ; Sat, 21 Aug 1999 09:34:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (fidelman@localhost) by ntcorp.dn.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id MAA17880 for ; Sat, 21 Aug 1999 12:36:16 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 21 Aug 1999 12:36:16 -0400 (EDT) From: Miles Fidelman X-Sender: fidelman@ntcorp.dn.net To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Majordomo on Win32? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > Rtnmi writes: > > Looks as though there is a more official way of doing this through this > > thing called Majorodomo. But I just learned how to spell PERL. So I am > > in need of much information. Does anyone know if PERL will run on > > Windows 95. yup - see www.cpan.org for sources of perl stuff, and www.cpan.org/ports/index.html for pre-compiled binaries but... you might be better off installing Linux on your box (perhaps in a dual-boot configuration) - that would give you a lot more flexibility for pulling software off the net ************************************************************************** The Center for Civic Networking PO Box 600618 Miles R. Fidelman, President & Newtonville, MA 02460-0006 Director, Municipal Telecommunications Strategies Program 617-558-3698 fax: 617-630-8946 mfidelman@civicnet.org http://civic.net/ccn.html Information Infrastructure: Public Spaces for the 21st Century Let's Start With: Internet Wall-Plugs Everywhere Say It Often, Say It Loud: "I Want My Internet!" ************************************************************************** From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 22 11:04:14 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA14235; Sun, 22 Aug 1999 10:43:22 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id KAA14227 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sun, 22 Aug 1999 10:43:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: from unix.worldpath.net (unix.worldpath.net [206.152.180.10]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id SAA03537 for ; Sat, 21 Aug 1999 18:41:29 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (ndur564-22.worldpath.net [208.133.219.62]) by unix.worldpath.net (8.9.3/8.9.3(WPI)) with SMTP id VAA04849; Sat, 21 Aug 1999 21:51:37 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: X-Sender: bourbeau@unix.worldpath.net X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.0 Date: Sat, 21 Aug 1999 20:52:26 -0400 To: Postmaster From: Ken Bourbeau Subject: Re: Nondeliverable mail Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk To: POSTMASTER@MSN.COM I am listowner of the mailinglist mckeefan-digest@btechnet.com Please advise me how I'm supposed to remove a subscriber from my list when your mail system fails to identify the address that is bouncing. This is a common problem with subscriptions from your service. I'll be forced to disapprove all subscription requests from MSN if this can not be resolved. I know many other list managers who feel the same way. I'm sure MSN customers will not be pleased if they are refused subscriptions because their ISP doesn't provide proper information. At 04:47 AM 8/19/99 -0700, you wrote: >------Transcript of session unavailable------- >Received: from mail.btechnet.com - 209.122.149.44 by msn.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC; > Thu, 19 Aug 1999 01:34:00 -0700 >Received: (from majordom@localhost) by mail.btechnet.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id EAA03439 for mckeefan-digest-outgoing; Thu, 19 Aug 1999 04:00:19 -0400 >Date: Thu, 19 Aug 1999 04:00:19 -0400 >Message-Id: <199908190800.EAA03439@mail.btechnet.com> >From: owner-mckeefan-digest@btechnet.com (mckeefan-digest) >To: mckeefan-digest@btechnet.com >Subject: mckeefan-digest V2 #443 >Reply-To: mckeefan@mail.btechnet.com >Sender: owner-mckeefan-digest@btechnet.com >Errors-To: owner-mckeefan-digest@btechnet.com >Precedence: bulk >Return-Path: owner-mckeefan@mail.btechnet.com > > >mckeefan-digest Thursday, August 19 1999 Volume 02 : Number 443 > > > >"Little Diva" >The Maria McKee Internet Digest >*********************************************************************** >Little Diva is for discussion of Maria McKee, Lone Justice and related >topics. Distribution as mail volume warrants. Please be fair to the >artist and limit taping to material not readily available through >commercial distribution. >Check out our web page at: >http://ttlc.net/little_diva/ >*********************************************************************** > >---------------------------------------------------------------------- > >Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1999 21:45:08 EDT >From: Sluzor@aol.com >Subject: NEW CD SETS > >Hello and Happy 35th Maria!! > >How fitting that the first sets of the 4 CDs went out on Maria's Birthday. >That's right, they are starting to go out! They are coming Priority Mail so >keep an eye out for them. > >I must credit my anonymous help--the artwork is INCREDIBLE as are the liner >notes--not to mention the sound. > >Please post reviews and look for yours soon! > >Brian > > >- -------------------------------------------------- >Little Diva WWW Site: >http://ttlc.net/little_diva/ >- ---------------------------------------------------- > >------------------------------ > >Date: Wed, 18 Aug 1999 19:29:55 EDT >From: Kato6160@aol.com >Subject: Re: mckeefan-digest V2 #441 > >just to let everyone know, aug 17 is maria's birthday. she is 35 years old >and in GOOD health. HAPPY BIRTHDAY Maria, YOU ARE THE LIGHT IN EVERONE ON >THIS LIST'S WORLD. thank you for your music---kato--- > > >- -------------------------------------------------- >Little Diva WWW Site: >http://ttlc.net/little_diva/ >- ---------------------------------------------------- > >------------------------------ > >Date: Wed, 18 Aug 1999 20:35:45 EDT >From: ShelDesign@aol.com >Subject: Re: mckeefan-digest V2 #442 > >Happy Birthday Maria! > > >- -------------------------------------------------- >Little Diva WWW Site: >http://ttlc.net/little_diva/ >- ---------------------------------------------------- > >------------------------------ > >End of mckeefan-digest V2 #443 >****************************** > >To UNsunsbcribe from the Little Diva Digest: >mailto:majordomo@btechnet.com >with the words unsubscribe mckeefan-digest >in the body (not the subject) of the message > Best to ya from the Sticks o New Hampshire, Kenny ------------------------------------------------------------ Maria McKee Mailinglist http://ttlc.net/little_diva Rod Stewart Mailinglist http://ttlc.net/storyteller ------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks for those of you supporting my new business http://truevine.net Christian Filtered Internet Dialup From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 23 03:06:43 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id CAA23264; Mon, 23 Aug 1999 02:49:41 -0700 (PDT) Received: from finch-post-12.mail.demon.net (finch-post-12.mail.demon.net [194.217.242.41]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id CAA23257 for ; Mon, 23 Aug 1999 02:49:35 -0700 (PDT) Received: from smsltd.demon.co.uk ([158.152.67.200] helo=smsltd) by finch-post-12.mail.demon.net with smtp (Exim 2.12 #1) id 11IqtX-000G0E-0C for List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM; Mon, 23 Aug 1999 10:00:04 +0000 From: "Nigel Horne" To: Subject: Re: MSN (was Nondeliverable mail) Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 10:59:57 +0100 Message-ID: <000201beed4e$41632080$4968fea9@demon.co.uk> X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook 8.5, Build 4.71.2377.0 Importance: Normal Disposition-Notification-To: "Nigel Horne" X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2314.1300 In-Reply-To: <199908230800.BAA21394@honor.greatcircle.com> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I have recently received the same problems with MSN bounces. Thankfully MSN is not a popular service so it generally doesn't take too long to find the culprit. But I don't know why MSN is broken. -Nigel From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 23 05:39:47 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id FAA26379; Mon, 23 Aug 1999 05:28:46 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail.MONBEBE.NET (mail.monbebe.net [216.25.42.193]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id FAA26372 for ; Mon, 23 Aug 1999 05:28:41 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Chartres-2-61.club-internet.fr [195.36.131.61] by mail.MONBEBE.NET with ESMTP (SMTPD32-5.05) id A08E133F0114; Mon, 23 Aug 1999 08:37:34 -0400 Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 12:39:07 +0200 From: Monbebe Admin X-Mailer: The Bat! (v1.35) S/N C3810D62 / Personal Organization: http://www.monbebe.net X-Priority: 3 (Normal) Message-ID: <12527.990823@monbebe.net> To: Rtnmi@aol.com CC: List-Managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: List-Managers-Digest V8 #155 In-reply-To: References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hello Rtnmi, Thursday, August 19, 1999, 12:43:50 PM, you wrote: > However now in our search to find a program to run on > our Windows 95 operating system for us to have > more control over the environment that our members are > subjected to (by having our own mailing list program) we came > upon this list. You should try DOLIST (http://www.dolist.net), which is a really new MLM software really powerful, created with a user who was bored to have one option for this here and another like only available to the last MLM he was testing. We have run it under W95 for some days, then moved it on our NT server, very quickly with all the parameters unchanged, really fun! Best regards, -- Technical Support http://www.monbebe.net Un site pour apprendre a etre parents From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 23 10:22:42 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA29158; Mon, 23 Aug 1999 10:04:43 -0700 (PDT) Received: from euler.central.cranfield.ac.uk (euler.central.cranfield.ac.uk [138.250.48.9]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA29151 for ; Mon, 23 Aug 1999 10:04:36 -0700 (PDT) Received: from neumann.ccc.cranfield.ac.uk ([138.250.24.137] ident=cc047) by euler.central.cranfield.ac.uk with esmtp (Exim 2.12 #1) id 11IxgL-0006iS-00; Mon, 23 Aug 1999 18:14:53 +0100 Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 18:14:39 +0100 (BST) From: Jeffrey Goldberg X-Sender: cc047@neumann.ccc.cranfield.ac.uk Reply-To: Jeffrey Goldberg To: Ken Bourbeau cc: Postmaster , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Useless NDRs [Was: Nondeliverable mail] In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Organization: Cranfield University Computer Centre MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Thank you for copying your message (quoted in its below for the benefit of the MNS mail managers) to the list managers list I agree that sites (such as MSN.com) which produce useless non-delivery reports (or allow list unfriendly autoresponders or other policies which cause headaches for list manangers) need to be excluded from Internet mailing lists. For the lists that I manage, if I get a useless NDR or worse, a misdirected one, or a bad autoresponder from a site, I will send a complaint to the postmaster at that site. If I don't get a satisfactory response, I will remove all subscribers from that site from all of the lists that I manage. I send a message to those subscribers explaining that their ISPs email system behaves in an Internet unfriendly way and that if they want to participate in Internet discussion groups they should select an ISP that takes standards seriousely and operates a mail system that is consistent with the spirit of cooperation. Personally, I would like to see someone (not me) maintain a list or separate lists of sites which (1) Produce useless/misleading NDRs (2) Send NDRs to the wrong addresses (Reply-To or header From instead of envelope from) (3) Allow or encourage bad autoresponders Something like RBL style lists would be very helpful, and then different mailing list managers could simply decide what they want to do about such sites. But the mechanism isn't that important. Everyone here knows of a handful of sites that cause list managers headaches. If someone maintained a resource of such sites would be avoid some headaches and apply some collective presure on those sites to clean up their acts. On Sat, 21 Aug 1999, Ken Bourbeau wrote: > Date: Sat, 21 Aug 1999 20:52:26 -0400 > From: Ken Bourbeau > To: Postmaster > Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM > Subject: Re: Nondeliverable mail > > To: POSTMASTER@MSN.COM > > I am listowner of the mailinglist mckeefan-digest@btechnet.com > > Please advise me how I'm supposed to remove a subscriber from > my list when your mail system fails to identify the address that is > bouncing. This is a common problem with subscriptions from your > service. > > I'll be forced to disapprove all subscription requests from MSN if this can > not be resolved. I know many other list managers who feel the same way. > > I'm sure MSN customers will not be pleased if they are refused subscriptions > because their ISP doesn't provide proper information. > > > At 04:47 AM 8/19/99 -0700, you wrote: > >------Transcript of session unavailable------- > >Received: from mail.btechnet.com - 209.122.149.44 by msn.com with > Microsoft SMTPSVC; > > Thu, 19 Aug 1999 01:34:00 -0700 -- Jeffrey Goldberg +44 (0)1234 750 111 x 2826 Cranfield Computer Centre FAX 751 814 J.Goldberg@Cranfield.ac.uk http://WWW.Cranfield.ac.uk/public/cc/cc047/ Relativism is the triumph of authority over truth, convention over justice. From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 23 15:52:42 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id PAA02315; Mon, 23 Aug 1999 15:37:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from scifi.squawk.com (scifi.squawk.com [208.143.206.18]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id PAA02270 for ; Mon, 23 Aug 1999 15:36:56 -0700 (PDT) Received: from tpad.squawk.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by scifi.squawk.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id SAA03099; Mon, 23 Aug 1999 18:46:56 -0400 Message-Id: <3.0.5.32.19990823184650.033c2760@127.0.0.1> X-Sender: njs@127.0.0.1 X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.5 (32) Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 18:46:50 -0400 To: Jeffrey Goldberg From: Nick Simicich Subject: Re: Useless NDRs [Was: Nondeliverable mail] Cc: Ken Bourbeau , Postmaster , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I did someting else. I hacked on bulk-mailer until it can do what I've heard referred to as VERP, which I learned about here. When my bounce parser can't understand a bounce, it sets a flag for that mailing list (creates a file in a certain directory). The next distribution to that mailing list is done as individual pieces of mail, all with different RFC821 MAIL FROM addresses. If the distribution is successful, bulk mailer removes the flag. Pretty much every bounce will bounce to the MAIL FROM address, so I then can sort them out automatically. I think sites are getting better about at least sending bounces back to RFC821 MAIL FROM. Since I have done this, I've only encountered one site that is trying to send bounces to my mailing list to reply-to and will not fix their software. This, of course gets them the "you are not a member of the list" bounce, which goes to their postmaster address. I think they either ignore their postmaster address or they enjoy abuse. It is unfortunate that Microsoft products are not yet robust enough to deal with a simple matter such as this correctly. As someone who manages a mailing list, I can likely deal with it in a way that is non-destructive, but I really pity the individual user who is forced to deal with one of these useless bounces. I also find that there are three or four autoresponder patterns that I grep context for and bounce for manual review that get 95% of the bad autoresponders that reply to lists. Probably simply checking for "out of the office" gets 90% of them. Very few false positives (but this is likely to be one) :-). At 06:14 PM 8/23/99 +0100, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote: >Thank you for copying your message (quoted in its below for the benefit of >the MNS mail managers) to the list managers list > >I agree that sites (such as MSN.com) which produce useless non-delivery >reports (or allow list unfriendly autoresponders or other policies which >cause headaches for list manangers) need to be excluded from Internet >mailing lists. > >For the lists that I manage, if I get a useless NDR or worse, a >misdirected one, or a bad autoresponder from a site, I will send a >complaint to the postmaster at that site. If I don't get a satisfactory >response, I will remove all subscribers from that site from all of the >lists that I manage. I send a message to those subscribers explaining >that their ISPs email system behaves in an Internet unfriendly way >and that if they want to participate in Internet discussion groups they >should select an ISP that takes standards seriousely and operates a mail >system that is consistent with the spirit of cooperation. > >Personally, I would like to see someone (not me) maintain a list >or separate lists of sites which > > (1) Produce useless/misleading NDRs > (2) Send NDRs to the wrong addresses (Reply-To or header From instead of > envelope from) > (3) Allow or encourage bad autoresponders > >Something like RBL style lists would be very helpful, and then different >mailing list managers could simply decide what they want to do about such >sites. But the mechanism isn't that important. Everyone here knows of >a handful of sites that cause list managers headaches. If someone >maintained a resource of such sites would be avoid some headaches and >apply some collective presure on those sites to clean up their acts. > > > >On Sat, 21 Aug 1999, Ken Bourbeau wrote: > >> Date: Sat, 21 Aug 1999 20:52:26 -0400 >> From: Ken Bourbeau >> To: Postmaster >> Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM >> Subject: Re: Nondeliverable mail >> >> To: POSTMASTER@MSN.COM >> >> I am listowner of the mailinglist mckeefan-digest@btechnet.com >> >> Please advise me how I'm supposed to remove a subscriber from >> my list when your mail system fails to identify the address that is >> bouncing. This is a common problem with subscriptions from your >> service. >> >> I'll be forced to disapprove all subscription requests from MSN if this can >> not be resolved. I know many other list managers who feel the same way. >> >> I'm sure MSN customers will not be pleased if they are refused subscriptions >> because their ISP doesn't provide proper information. >> >> >> At 04:47 AM 8/19/99 -0700, you wrote: >> >------Transcript of session unavailable------- >> >Received: from mail.btechnet.com - 209.122.149.44 by msn.com with >> Microsoft SMTPSVC; >> > Thu, 19 Aug 1999 01:34:00 -0700 > > >-- >Jeffrey Goldberg +44 (0)1234 750 111 x 2826 > Cranfield Computer Centre FAX 751 814 > J.Goldberg@Cranfield.ac.uk http://WWW.Cranfield.ac.uk/public/cc/cc047/ >Relativism is the triumph of authority over truth, convention over justice. > -- That which does not kill us, makes us stronger. That which does kill us makes us smell stronger, after a few days, anyway. Nick Simicich mailto:njs@scifi.squawk.com or (last choice) mailto:njs@us.ibm.com http://scifi.squawk.com/njs.html -- Stop by and Light Up The World! From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 23 16:07:40 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id PAA02474; Mon, 23 Aug 1999 15:54:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail4.svr.pol.co.uk (mail4.svr.pol.co.uk [195.92.193.211]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id PAA02467 for ; Mon, 23 Aug 1999 15:54:12 -0700 (PDT) Received: from modem-32.zinc.dialup.pol.co.uk ([62.136.14.160] ident=cc047) by mail4.svr.pol.co.uk with esmtp (Exim 2.12 #2) id 11J38h-0007Je-00; Tue, 24 Aug 1999 00:04:32 +0100 Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 00:04:23 +0100 (BST) From: Jeffrey Goldberg X-Sender: cc047@localhost.localdomain Reply-To: Jeffrey Goldberg To: Nick Simicich cc: Ken Bourbeau , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Useless NDRs [Was: Nondeliverable mail] In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.19990823184650.033c2760@127.0.0.1> Message-ID: Organization: Cranfield University Computer Centre MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Mon, 23 Aug 1999, Nick Simicich wrote: > I did someting else. I hacked on bulk-mailer until it can do what > I've heard referred to as VERP, which I learned about here. I agree that we should all be implementing VERP schemes. It is certainly on my ever growing "to-do" list here. But while VERP solve the headache of useless NDRs and of tracing out forwardings, etc, it does not absolve mail managers from having systems with useful NDRs. VERP-ing itself is not costless in terms of server resources, and it is a pitty that it is needed. > Pretty much every bounce will bounce to the MAIL FROM address, so I > then can sort them out automatically. I think sites are getting > better about at least sending bounces back to RFC821 MAIL FROM. > Since I have done this, I've only encountered one site that is trying > to send bounces to my mailing list to reply-to and will not fix their > software. Take a look at http://www.cranfield.ac.uk/docs/email/badbounce.html for a document to refer the people at that site to. It used to be a more common problem, but is thankfully becoming rarer. > I also find that there are three or four autoresponder patterns that I > grep context for and bounce for manual review that get 95% of the bad > autoresponders that reply to lists. Probably simply checking for "out > of the office" gets 90% of them. Very few false positives (but this > is likely to be one) :-). Yes. We can try to play catch up and keep our filters up-to-date, but still we should apply pressure to those sites which host bad autoresponders. So, I hope that you at least complain to the site manager when you do catch one of those. -j -- Jeffrey Goldberg +44 (0)1234 750 111 x 2826 Cranfield Computer Centre FAX 751 814 J.Goldberg@Cranfield.ac.uk http://WWW.Cranfield.ac.uk/public/cc/cc047/ Relativism is the triumph of authority over truth, convention over justice. From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 23 16:52:41 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA03039; Mon, 23 Aug 1999 16:45:29 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ivan.iecc.com (ivan.iecc.com [208.31.42.33]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id QAA03032 for ; Mon, 23 Aug 1999 16:45:24 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 24502 invoked by uid 100); 23 Aug 1999 19:55:49 -0400 Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 19:55:47 -0400 (EDT) From: John R Levine To: Jeffrey Goldberg cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Useless NDRs [Was: Nondeliverable mail] In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > I agree that sites (such as MSN.com) which produce useless non-delivery > reports (or allow list unfriendly autoresponders or other policies which > cause headaches for list manangers) need to be excluded from Internet > mailing lists. MSN has a horrible mail system that runs on NT and consists of hacked up old versions of Exchange or something like that. It's held together with duct tape and chewing gum. I gather that their plan is to move as quickly as they can to a system based on Hotmail, since the newest version of Outlook Express has special code to use Hotmail (or any other web site that implements their undocumented protocol) as the mail server. This doesn't excuse MSN, but it does mean that until they move their system to something based on Hotmail, it's not going to get any better, and I wouldn't blame you for kicking all MSN users off your list. If you get an MSN bounce, just kick off all the MSN users, then send them a mailing explaining you can't tell who caused the bounce, if it wasn't them they can resubscribe, and they should complain to MSN for forcing this asinine situation. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47 From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 23 23:19:54 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA07162; Mon, 23 Aug 1999 23:07:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id XAA07155 for ; Mon, 23 Aug 1999 23:07:22 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id XAA20162 ; Mon, 23 Aug 1999 23:18:24 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 23:17:41 -0700 To: John R Levine , Jeffrey Goldberg From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Useless NDRs [Was: Nondeliverable mail] Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 7:55 PM -0400 8/23/99, John R Levine wrote: > This doesn't excuse MSN, but it does mean that until they move their system > to something based on Hotmail, it's not going to get any better, and I > wouldn't blame you for kicking all MSN users off your list. If you get an > MSN bounce, just kick off all the MSN users, then send them a mailing > explaining you can't tell who caused the bounce, if it wasn't them they can > resubscribe, and they should complain to MSN for forcing this asinine > situation. I rarely have many problems with MSN. Over the weekend, however, the system clearly burped, and blew out some noticably bogus messages. Before you throw MSN out iwth the bathwather, I suggest you take a second look, and ask yourself whether what you're seeing is a real problem, or a short-term situation on the order of the "too many hops" problem most of us have caused at one point or another. Because I think MSN is getting ripped here for being MSN, not for any systemic problem. And I say that as no real fan of MSN, only as someone who noticed what as clearly a temporary, systemwide oopsie on their part and simply threw away all of the mail from them until it stopped, the same way I throw away boucnes for any site that's clearly in a case of short-term failure mode. As I'd hope other sites will do for mine when I screw mine up again... -- Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? ) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) + The Jedi that I admire most met up with Darth Maul and now he's toast... (Weird Al Yankovic - The Saga Begins) From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 24 07:07:49 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id HAA14505; Tue, 24 Aug 1999 07:02:40 -0700 (PDT) Received: from euler.central.cranfield.ac.uk (euler.central.cranfield.ac.uk [138.250.48.9]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id HAA14498 for ; Tue, 24 Aug 1999 07:02:35 -0700 (PDT) Received: from neumann.ccc.cranfield.ac.uk ([138.250.24.137] ident=cc047) by euler.central.cranfield.ac.uk with esmtp (Exim 2.12 #1) id 11JHK8-0003uJ-00; Tue, 24 Aug 1999 15:13:16 +0100 Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 15:13:15 +0100 (BST) From: Jeffrey Goldberg X-Sender: cc047@neumann.ccc.cranfield.ac.uk Reply-To: Jeffrey Goldberg To: Chuq Von Rospach cc: John R Levine , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Useless NDRs [Was: Nondeliverable mail] In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Organization: Cranfield University Computer Centre MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Mon, 23 Aug 1999, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > I rarely have many problems with MSN. Now that you mention it, I agree. MSN has not been a site that I have had cause to consider barring. I was speaking generally in a context in which someone else was quoting a useless NDR from MSN. And yes > I think MSN is getting ripped here for being MSN, not for any > systemic problem. Guilty as charged. I suppose that I am one of many who wanted to find fault with MSN. The problems that I do have are mostly from two sources. One of my lists has a lot of people from business schools. A substantial number of these are running Lotus Notes. These really do produce useless bounces since the internal LN username is often very distinct from the smtp email alias. Also LN SMTP gateway strips most headers, so certainly doesn't provide them in bounces. Another recent problem is an autoresponder in some MS Exchange systems. But yes, I followed along with being overly hard on MSN for the obvious reasons. The general point remains. Those who manage email systems that misbehave wrt mailing lists should be listed in a way that allows mailing list managers to ban or warn those subscribing from those domains. I also have to admitt that not all NDRs from Cranfield are useful, but we try and we have helpful and responsive postmasters who are always willing to help out list managers when the odd useless NDR does occur. -j -- Jeffrey Goldberg +44 (0)1234 750 111 x 2826 Cranfield Computer Centre FAX 751 814 J.Goldberg@Cranfield.ac.uk http://WWW.Cranfield.ac.uk/public/cc/cc047/ Relativism is the triumph of authority over truth, convention over justice. From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 24 11:07:52 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA17013; Tue, 24 Aug 1999 11:00:43 -0700 (PDT) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA17000 for ; Tue, 24 Aug 1999 11:00:33 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (A17-216-27-198.apple.com [17.216.27.198]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id LAA257772 ; Tue, 24 Aug 1999 11:10:11 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 10:52:48 -0700 To: Jeffrey Goldberg , Chuq Von Rospach From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Useless NDRs [Was: Nondeliverable mail] Cc: John R Levine , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 3:13 PM +0100 8/24/99, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote: > The problems that I do have are mostly from two sources. One of my lists > has a lot of people from business schools. A substantial number of these > are running Lotus Notes. > Another recent problem is an autoresponder in some MS Exchange systems. And the third really bad set of servers is CCmail, especially educational sites that haven't upgraded in the last decade or so.... Lotus notes is just plain old evil. MS Exchange is broken in a nujmber of ways, but mostly makes it easy for someone to set up a site that does stupid things. And CCmail is disappearing from the horizon, thank god.... > I also have to admitt that not all NDRs from Cranfield are useful, but we > try and we have helpful and responsive postmasters who are always willing > to help out list managers when the odd useless NDR does occur. Stuff happens. A big part of taking care of stuff is trying to be responsive.... My stuff isn't 100% perfect, either, but I'm working on it.... -- Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? ) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) + The Jedi that I admire most met up with Darth Maul and now he's toast... (Weird Al Yankovic - The Saga Begins) From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 24 14:51:31 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA19182; Tue, 24 Aug 1999 14:44:56 -0700 (PDT) Received: from bp.ucs.usl.edu (bp.ucs.usl.edu [130.70.40.36]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id OAA19171 for ; Tue, 24 Aug 1999 14:44:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: from usl.edu (ish.usl.edu [130.70.53.59]) by bp.ucs.usl.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1/ucs-server_1.3) with ESMTP id QAA21574 for ; Tue, 24 Aug 1999 16:55:30 -0500 (CDT) Message-ID: <37C314F8.F631968@usl.edu> Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 16:56:08 -0500 From: Istvan Berkeley Organization: Philosophy, USL X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.61 [en] (Win95; I) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: Useless NDRs [Was: Nondeliverable mail] References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hi there, My list, PHILOSOP, suffers a great deal from NDR's. This is in large part due to the fact that it is quite a large list and has a global span (I have subscribers from every continent, with the exception of Antarctica). This means errors can arise for all sorts of reasons (e.g. some sys admins in Israel went on strike a while ago). Most problems I can eventually sort out. However, there are a persistent few... At the current time, I have a bad problem with a .com subscription that appears to be forwarding to a site somewhere in .nl, whilst stripping all the useful info from the headers. Forwarding systems are often a cause of headaches. However, the very worst offenders, in my experience, are AOL. I have had a persistent NDR from one of my dozen or so AOL subscribers which has been with me for months. The alleged username is not in my subscriber base. I assume that it is someone's AOL alias. I have tried to contact AOL, but have receieved nothing other than automated responses. I am now thinking of just banning all AOL users. Has anyone else run into analogous problems with AOL? If so, are there any other remedies other than a site ban? All the best, Istvan PHILOSOP Moderator -- Istvan S. N. Berkeley Ph.D Philosophy & Cognitive Science E-mail: istvan@usl.edu The University of Southwestern Louisiana P.O. Box 43770 Tel: +1 318 482-6807 Lafayette, LA 70504-3770 Fax: +1 318 482-6195 USA http://www.ucs.usl.edu/~isb9112 From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 24 16:20:22 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA20008; Tue, 24 Aug 1999 16:06:03 -0700 (PDT) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id QAA20001 for ; Tue, 24 Aug 1999 16:05:56 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (A17-216-27-198.apple.com [17.216.27.198]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id QAA200150 ; Tue, 24 Aug 1999 16:15:20 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <37C314F8.F631968@usl.edu> References: <37C314F8.F631968@usl.edu> Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 16:14:34 -0700 To: Istvan Berkeley , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Useless NDRs [Was: Nondeliverable mail] Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 4:56 PM -0500 8/24/99, Istvan Berkeley wrote: > Forwarding systems are often a > cause of headaches. they can be a pain. I do a due dilligence trying to track things down, then I have a procmail script that looks for the unfindable names and throws away the error messages for me so I don't waste any more time on them. If they don't want me to find the addresses, they can waste the system resources bouncing stuff to /dev/null until I get around to probing the list. >However, the very worst offenders, in my experience, > are AOL. I have had a persistent NDR from one of my dozen or so AOL > subscribers which has been with me for months. The alleged username is > not in my subscriber base. I assume that it is someone's AOL alias. nope. I'll bet a beer it's someone forwarding from a non-AOL address to AOL, where the AOL screen name is dead, adn the forwarding site is stripping all of the useful info. -- Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? ) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) + The Jedi that I admire most met up with Darth Maul and now he's toast... (Weird Al Yankovic - The Saga Begins) From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 24 21:04:52 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA22983; Tue, 24 Aug 1999 21:02:33 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail.xnet.com (quake.xnet.com [198.147.221.33]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id VAA22973 for ; Tue, 24 Aug 1999 21:02:28 -0700 (PDT) Received: from typhoon.xnet.com (typhoon.xnet.com [198.147.221.66]) by mail.xnet.com (8.9.3+Sun/XNet-3.0R) with SMTP id XAA07580 for ; Tue, 24 Aug 1999 23:12:53 -0500 (CDT) Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 23:12:53 -0500 (CDT) Message-Id: <199908250412.XAA07580@mail.xnet.com> From: Adam Bailey To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: Useless NDRs [Was: Nondeliverable mail] Organization: XNet Information Systems, Inc. In-Reply-To: <37C314F8.F631968@usl.edu> References: <37C314F8.F631968@usl.edu> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On 8/24/99 4:56 PM, Istvan Berkeley wrote... > However, the very worst offenders, in my experience, are AOL. I > have had a persistent NDR from one of my dozen or so AOL > subscribers which has been with me for months. The alleged username > is not in my subscriber base. I assume that it is someone's AOL > alias. I have tried to contact AOL, but have receieved nothing > other than automated responses. Think about it for a moment. Do you really think AOL is just reporting the wrong address for kicks? Read the headers. Other than not being compliant with LISTSERV, there's nothing wrong with AOL's error messages. -- Adam Bailey | Chicago, Illinois adamb@lull.org | Finger/Web for PGP adamkb@aol.com | http://www.lull.org/adam/ From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 24 21:35:21 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA23165; Tue, 24 Aug 1999 21:21:22 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ivan.iecc.com (ivan.iecc.com [208.31.42.33]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id VAA23158 for ; Tue, 24 Aug 1999 21:21:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 22202 invoked by uid 100); 25 Aug 1999 00:32:03 -0400 Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 00:32:02 -0400 (EDT) From: John R Levine To: Istvan Berkeley cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: Useless NDRs [Was: Nondeliverable mail] In-Reply-To: <37C314F8.F631968@usl.edu> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > I am now thinking of just banning all AOL users. Has anyone else run > into analogous problems with AOL? If so, are there any other remedies > other than a site ban? AOL actually has a very well run mail system. Their bounce reports are quite accurate and readable. I'm with Chuq, the problem is that some other address is forwarded to the bum AOL address. The only way to diagnose these things is with list probes, messages sent to each subscriber with a code in the subject and body that identifies who you sent it to, so when a smashed NDR comes back you can figure out which message and hence which address it was. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47 From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 24 22:49:51 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id WAA23940; Tue, 24 Aug 1999 22:41:56 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id WAA23931 for ; Tue, 24 Aug 1999 22:41:51 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id WAA27444 ; Tue, 24 Aug 1999 22:53:16 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <199908250412.XAA07580@mail.xnet.com> References: <37C314F8.F631968@usl.edu> <199908250412.XAA07580@mail.xnet.com> Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 22:47:34 -0700 To: Adam Bailey , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Useless NDRs [Was: Nondeliverable mail] Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 11:12 PM -0500 8/24/99, Adam Bailey wrote: > Read the headers. Other than not being compliant with LISTSERV, > there's nothing wrong with AOL's error messages. AOL's actually a lot more reliable than most sites. I feel perfectly comfortable removing a "user unknown" on the first bounce with AOL than with anyone, where I usually wait a while to make sure.... -- Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? ) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) + The Jedi that I admire most met up with Darth Maul and now he's toast... (Weird Al Yankovic - The Saga Begins) From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 24 23:04:53 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id WAA24069; Tue, 24 Aug 1999 22:59:40 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail.xnet.com (quake.xnet.com [198.147.221.33]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id WAA24062 for ; Tue, 24 Aug 1999 22:59:33 -0700 (PDT) Received: from typhoon.xnet.com (typhoon.xnet.com [198.147.221.66]) by mail.xnet.com (8.9.3+Sun/XNet-3.0R) with SMTP id BAA16442 for ; Wed, 25 Aug 1999 01:10:00 -0500 (CDT) Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 01:10:00 -0500 (CDT) Message-Id: <199908250610.BAA16442@mail.xnet.com> From: Adam Bailey To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Useless NDRs [Was: Nondeliverable mail] Organization: Xnet Information Systems, Inc. In-Reply-To: References: <37C314F8.F631968@usl.edu> <199908250412.XAA07580@mail.xnet.com> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > At 11:12 PM -0500 8/24/99, Adam Bailey wrote: > >> Read the headers. Other than not being compliant with LISTSERV, >> there's nothing wrong with AOL's error messages. > > AOL's actually a lot more reliable than most sites. I feel perfectly > comfortable removing a "user unknown" on the first bounce with AOL > than with anyone, where I usually wait a while to make sure.... Well, even I wouldn't go that far. AOL, like any giant site, has a tendency to have the occasional bad day where it sends out thousands of erroneous error messages. But those are usually easy to spot; when you have fifty of your AOL subscribers suddenly generating errors, it's a good idea to give them a day. -- Adam Bailey | Chicago, Illinois adamb@lull.org | Finger/Web for PGP adamkb@aol.com | http://www.lull.org/adam/ From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 24 23:34:51 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA24357; Tue, 24 Aug 1999 23:29:18 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail6.svr.pol.co.uk (mail6.svr.pol.co.uk [195.92.193.212]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id XAA24349 for ; Tue, 24 Aug 1999 23:29:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from modem-114.actinium.dialup.pol.co.uk ([62.136.44.114] ident=cc047) by mail6.svr.pol.co.uk with esmtp (Exim 2.12 #2) id 11JWis-0003lJ-00; Wed, 25 Aug 1999 07:39:51 +0100 Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 07:39:48 +0100 (BST) From: Jeffrey Goldberg X-Sender: cc047@localhost.localdomain Reply-To: Jeffrey Goldberg To: Istvan Berkeley cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: Useless NDRs [Was: Nondeliverable mail] In-Reply-To: <37C314F8.F631968@usl.edu> Message-ID: Organization: Cranfield University Computer Centre MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Tue, 24 Aug 1999, Istvan Berkeley wrote: > My list, PHILOSOP, suffers a great deal from NDR's. > I have had a persistent NDR from one of my dozen or so AOL > subscribers which has been with me for months. The alleged username is > not in my subscriber base. I assume that it is someone's AOL alias. I > have tried to contact AOL, but have receieved nothing other than > automated responses. > I am now thinking of just banning all AOL users. Has anyone else run > into analogous problems with AOL? No, I find bounces from AoL very good. The situation that you have is that someone on your list listing a non-AoL address has their mail forwarded to AoL. Even if you removed all of your AoL addresses you would still have the bounce that you report. Bounces from AoL usually include full headers and so are quite useful NDRs. Examining those you should be able to be able to take some reasonable guesses at what site forwarded the message to AoL and then look for that address on your list. The real solution to the problem of forwards to bad addresses is to set up your lists to use VERP, short of that you could run occassional probes. Minden jot kivanok, -j -- Jeffrey Goldberg +44 (0)1234 750 111 x 2826 Cranfield Computer Centre FAX 751 814 J.Goldberg@Cranfield.ac.uk http://WWW.Cranfield.ac.uk/public/cc/cc047/ Relativism is the triumph of authority over truth, convention over justice. From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 25 05:50:40 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id FAA00287; Wed, 25 Aug 1999 05:47:24 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ntcorp.dn.net (ntcorp.dn.net [207.226.172.79]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id FAA00280 for ; Wed, 25 Aug 1999 05:47:18 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (fidelman@localhost) by ntcorp.dn.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id IAA13677; Wed, 25 Aug 1999 08:49:44 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 08:49:42 -0400 (EDT) From: Miles Fidelman X-Sender: fidelman@ntcorp.dn.net To: Istvan Berkeley , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Useless NDRs [Was: Nondeliverable mail] In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Wed, 25 Aug 1999, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote: > The real solution to the problem of forwards to bad addresses is to set > up your lists to use VERP, short of that you could run occassional probes. this is a new one on me - what's VERP? ************************************************************************** The Center for Civic Networking PO Box 600618 Miles R. Fidelman, President & Newtonville, MA 02460-0006 Director, Municipal Telecommunications Strategies Program 617-558-3698 fax: 617-630-8946 mfidelman@civicnet.org http://civic.net/ccn.html Information Infrastructure: Public Spaces for the 21st Century Let's Start With: Internet Wall-Plugs Everywhere Say It Often, Say It Loud: "I Want My Internet!" ************************************************************************** From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 25 06:21:01 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id GAA00564; Wed, 25 Aug 1999 06:13:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Kitten.mcs.com (Kitten.mcs.com [192.160.127.90]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id GAA00557 for ; Wed, 25 Aug 1999 06:13:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Jupiter.mcs.net (dattier@Jupiter.mcs.net [192.160.127.88]) by Kitten.mcs.com (8.8.7/8.8.2) with ESMTP id IAA07162 for ; Wed, 25 Aug 1999 08:24:06 -0500 (CDT) Received: (from dattier@localhost) by Jupiter.mcs.net (8.9.3/8.8.2) id IAA96630 for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM; Wed, 25 Aug 1999 08:24:05 -0500 (CDT) From: "David W. Tamkin" Message-Id: <199908251324.IAA96630@Jupiter.mcs.net> Subject: Re: Useless NDRs In-Reply-To: from John R Levine at "Aug 25, 1999 00:32:02 am" To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 08:24:05 -0500 (CDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL54 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk John Levine wrote, | The only way to diagnose these things is with list probes, messages sent to | each subscriber with a code in the subject and body that identifies who you | sent it to, so when a smashed NDR comes back you can figure out which message | and hence which address it was. There are some smashed (good term for it, John) NDRs that don't return body or subject, so one has to put the probe identification into whatever it does return. For each incident that requires a probe, you have to tailor the probe to the particulars of the NDR. I had a subscriber forwarding to a nonexistent address on Prodigy without the courtesy to rewrite the envelope. All Prodigy's NDR said was that foo123b@prodigy.com was not a valid account, no headers, body, or anything from the original text, from the trip from the list host to the subscribed address, nor from the trip from the subscribed address to Prodigy. It never occurred to those people that the forwarding destination alone could possibly be insufficient information. The only clue was that at least Prodigy was returning to the envelope sender. (That was the only part they did right, and when they implemented it that way they probably congratulated themselves very lavishly.) Putting an identifier into the body or the subject would not have helped. (Lacking VERP capability then, I did something that's been posted here before and needn't be repeated, but it wasn't pretty.) From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 25 07:21:28 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id HAA01085; Wed, 25 Aug 1999 07:13:36 -0700 (PDT) Received: from halifax.chebucto.ns.ca (chebucto.ns.Ca [192.75.95.75]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id HAA01078 for ; Wed, 25 Aug 1999 07:13:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (user: 'potter', uid#5005) by halifax.chebucto.ns.ca id ; Wed, 25 Aug 1999 11:24:11 -0300 Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 11:24:10 -0300 (ADT) From: "David L. Potter" To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Subscription Probes... In-Reply-To: <199908250800.BAA25157@honor.greatcircle.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I am interested in setting up a subscription probe for the Majordomo lists we host. I think I saw a reference to this recently but it appears to have escaped my 'Inbox'. I think the reference was to VE.P...? I originally thought I'd conjure one up using a shell script.... placing a unique identifier in a X-Probe: header but if some sites are not returning all headers maybe the Subject: is more reliable...? Has this wheel already been invented? david potter From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 25 08:34:40 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id IAA01706; Wed, 25 Aug 1999 08:28:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ivan.iecc.com (ivan.iecc.com [208.31.42.33]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id IAA01699 for ; Wed, 25 Aug 1999 08:28:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 15659 invoked by uid 100); 25 Aug 1999 11:39:07 -0400 Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 11:39:07 -0400 (EDT) From: John R Levine To: Miles Fidelman cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Useless NDRs [Was: Nondeliverable mail] In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > this is a new one on me - what's VERP? Variable envelope return paths, a unique envelope sender on each message, so the address to which the bounce is sent identifies the bouncy address. If your list is foolist@list.org, and the recipient is bounce@boing.org, the VERP address would be something like foolist-owner-bounce=boing.org@list.org. It works very well. The main reason that some people don't like them is that it requires that each copy of a message be sent separately, rather than sending one message per site with a bunch of addresses, which is alleged to be slower. If you have very large messages, a very slow connection, and lots of recipients at the same placee (AOL maybe), that's probably true. But for normal list traffic, sending all of the messages in parallel is usually faster because of decreased latency. Note that some MLMs like Lyris both do VERPs and modest per-message customization with a tag at the bottom saying "this message was sent to bounce@boing.org". Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47 From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 25 10:07:40 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id JAA02501; Wed, 25 Aug 1999 09:50:56 -0700 (PDT) Received: from crow.a001.sprintmail.com (crow.prod.itd.earthlink.net [209.178.63.7]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id JAA02494 for ; Wed, 25 Aug 1999 09:50:51 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sarah (sdn-ar-005waseatP306.dialsprint.net [168.191.239.44]) by crow.a001.sprintmail.com (8.8.7/8.8.5) with SMTP id KAA23886 for ; Wed, 25 Aug 1999 10:01:36 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <001201beef1b$89140a60$2cefbfa8@sarah> From: "Chris McEwen" To: References: Subject: Re: Subscription Probes... Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 10:01:51 -0700 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2615.200 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk This is the very utility on another list for list managers that I asked for on another Admin list. The idea drew a total blank over there. Hopefully more will see a need here. I understand that LISTSERV has this feature built in. It would make finding the source of bounces coming from users who use a mail forwarding service a piece of cake. Yes, we can do this now with a manual binary search but with much more time and effort. This would be best if it wereusable from a Windows/MAC environment using email. I would venture a guess that a sizeable number of administrators manage their lists remotely. --Chris McEwen reply to: Socrates Press socrates@sprintmail.com ----- Original Message ----- From: David L. Potter I am interested in setting up a subscription probe for the Majordomo lists we host. I think I saw a reference to this recently but it appears to have escaped my 'Inbox'. From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 25 10:22:43 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA02790; Wed, 25 Aug 1999 10:14:07 -0700 (PDT) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA02778 for ; Wed, 25 Aug 1999 10:13:58 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (A17-216-27-198.apple.com [17.216.27.198]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id KAA183808 ; Wed, 25 Aug 1999 10:24:05 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <199908250610.BAA16442@mail.xnet.com> References: <37C314F8.F631968@usl.edu> <199908250412.XAA07580@mail.xnet.com> <199908250610.BAA16442@mail.xnet.com> Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 10:18:31 -0700 To: Adam Bailey , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Useless NDRs [Was: Nondeliverable mail] Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 1:10 AM -0500 8/25/99, Adam Bailey wrote: > Well, even I wouldn't go that far. AOL, like any giant site, has a > tendency to have the occasional bad day where it sends out thousands > of erroneous error messages. But those are usually easy to spot; Oh, god are they. And yes, when a site burps, I throw out their data. but it can be fun... (grin) -- Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? ) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) + The Jedi that I admire most met up with Darth Maul and now he's toast... (Weird Al Yankovic - The Saga Begins) From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 25 10:35:58 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA02804; Wed, 25 Aug 1999 10:15:00 -0700 (PDT) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA02796 for ; Wed, 25 Aug 1999 10:14:54 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (A17-216-27-198.apple.com [17.216.27.198]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id KAA207928 ; Wed, 25 Aug 1999 10:24:28 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 10:25:04 -0700 To: John R Levine , Miles Fidelman From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Useless NDRs [Was: Nondeliverable mail] Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 11:39 AM -0400 8/25/99, John R Levine wrote: > The main reason that some people don't like them is that it requires that > each copy of a message be sent separately, rather than sending one message > per site with a bunch of addresses, which is alleged to be slower. If you > have very large messages, a very slow connection, and lots of recipients at > the same placee (AOL maybe), that's probably true. But for normal list > traffic, sending all of the messages in parallel is usually faster because of > decreased latency. Depends. Another big slowdown is number of messages, since you're stuffing lots fo data into your mqueue (or mqueues), you start running into slowdowns based on directory size and/or disk I/O. It requires smarter delivery engines, either where your MLM does the SMTP stuff itself (as Infobeat does), or smarter queue management passing stuff off to sendmail (or whatever). Loading your outgoing queue directories into RAMdisk makes a huge difference, too... It requires some more intelligence on the delivery engine, but if you do it right, it's possibly faster, and not really any slower. But you won't do it with a standard release of MJ, bulk_mailer and sendmail. -- Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? ) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) + The Jedi that I admire most met up with Darth Maul and now he's toast... (Weird Al Yankovic - The Saga Begins) From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 25 11:04:38 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA03204; Wed, 25 Aug 1999 10:50:47 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail.n.ml.org (narnia.idsi.net [208.195.228.60]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id KAA03197 for ; Wed, 25 Aug 1999 10:50:40 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 6206 invoked by uid 505); 25 Aug 1999 18:01:40 -0000 Received: from localhost (sendmail-bs@127.0.0.1) by localhost with SMTP; 25 Aug 1999 18:01:40 -0000 Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 14:01:39 -0400 (EDT) From: Daniel Reed To: Miles Fidelman cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Useless NDRs [Was: Nondeliverable mail] In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Wed, 25 Aug 1999, Miles Fidelman wrote: ) On Wed, 25 Aug 1999, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote: ) > The real solution to the problem of forwards to bad addresses is to set ) > up your lists to use VERP, short of that you could run occassional probes. ) this is a new one on me - what's VERP? Check out ftp://koobera.math.uic.edu/www/proto/verp.txt . VERP stands for Variable Envelope Return Paths, and it's basically just having the recipient address encoded in the return address. Bounce messages are thus targetted at that specially-created address which lets your bounce handler determine whose address bounced without parsing the actual bounce message. If you're a subscriber of and I sent a message to that list, you would get a message with an envelope sender of , I would get it as , etc. (with the 17 refering to this being message 17, so my bounce handler (test-return) can figure out which message bounced). -- Daniel Reed Faith: not wanting to know what is true. -- Friedrich Nietzsche From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 25 11:19:38 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA03467; Wed, 25 Aug 1999 11:14:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Kitten.mcs.com (Kitten.mcs.com [192.160.127.90]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA03460 for ; Wed, 25 Aug 1999 11:14:12 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Jupiter.mcs.net (dattier@Jupiter.mcs.net [192.160.127.88]) by Kitten.mcs.com (8.8.7/8.8.2) with ESMTP id NAA01913 for ; Wed, 25 Aug 1999 13:25:06 -0500 (CDT) Received: (from dattier@localhost) by Jupiter.mcs.net (8.9.3/8.8.2) id NAA00190 for List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM; Wed, 25 Aug 1999 13:25:05 -0500 (CDT) From: "David W. Tamkin" Message-Id: <199908251825.NAA00190@Jupiter.mcs.net> Subject: Re: Subscription Probes... In-Reply-To: from "David L. Potter" at "Aug 25, 1999 11:24:10 am" Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 13:25:05 -0500 (CDT) Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL54 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk David Potter asked, | I am interested in setting up a subscription probe for the Majordomo | lists we host. I think I saw a reference to this recently but it appears | to have escaped my 'Inbox'. | | I think the reference was to VE.P...? VERP, variable envelope return path; you send out each copy of the probe with a different envelope sender that you can identify with the addressee. John Levine just posted a good explanation. | I originally thought I'd conjure one up using a shell script.... placing | a unique identifier in a X-Probe: header but if some sites are not | returning all headers maybe the Subject: is more reliable...? You have to look at the bounces you're receiving and see what information from the original message is being returned in them. THAT's where you have to put the identifying information. Recently on the list-moderators list there was a problem where a subscriber was forwarding to something that returned only the subject and nothing else from the original message, but many other mystery bounces have not returned the subject. There is no single best place to identify the recipient of the probe. From list-managers-owner Thu Aug 26 11:18:39 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA20407; Thu, 26 Aug 1999 11:15:22 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id LAA20009 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Thu, 26 Aug 1999 11:00:40 -0700 (PDT) Received: from harrier.prod.itd.earthlink.net (harrier.prod.itd.earthlink.net [207.217.121.12]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id JAA28665 for ; Mon, 23 Aug 1999 09:25:42 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Default (pool0406.cvx31-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net [209.179.147.151]) by harrier.prod.itd.earthlink.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id JAA05262 for ; Mon, 23 Aug 1999 09:36:12 -0700 (PDT) Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 09:36:12 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199908231636.JAA05262@harrier.prod.itd.earthlink.net> X-Sender: sbrooks@mail.earthlink.net (Unverified) X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Light Version 1.5.2 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Sam Brooks Subject: RE: MSN-Nondeliverable Mail Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Ken Bourbeau writes: <> To: POSTMASTER@MSN.COM I am listowner of the mailinglist mckeefan-digest@btechnet.com Please advise me how I'm supposed to remove a subscriber from my list when your mail system fails to identify the address that is bouncing. This is a common problem with subscriptions from your service. ************REPLY************ Hi, Used to have that problem, until I realized that MSN changes a members address slightly, for whatever reason. Scenario: I join msn and get/have the email address of me@msn.com MSN changes the address slightly to this: me@classic.msn.com Methinks this is some kind of mail server designation. There are others, but I've seen classic used most often. I then join your list with me@msn.com Everything OK, then address bounces. MSN notifies you, the listowner, that me@classic.msn.com in not valid. So, you now send an email command to the server to uns*b me@classic.msn.com. And what happens, the server comes back and says, me@classic.msn.com, is not a member of whatever list. Solution: Most of the time, just drop the prefixes in the email address in front of msn.com and send the addy in. OR, pull down your subscriber list and look for the address there. I've never had a msn member that was not on my subscriber list. However, most of the time is was just not in a form the computer would recognize. BTW-Thanks for adding a copy of your digest to your post. Really enjoyed reading it. ;) Sam A Brooks sbrooks@alist4u.net Specializing in Complete, "One-Stop", "Turn-Key" List Hosting Solutions for the small to medium Business Owner. http://www.alist4u.net Public Lists currently hosted on our server: KitCar List(Discussion Group) HerbInfo Lis(Discussion Group) Mr KABC NewsLetter From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 29 00:33:27 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id AAA28322; Sun, 29 Aug 1999 00:21:28 -0700 (PDT) Received: from vjs.org (vjs.telephonet.com [207.252.88.49]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id AAA28315 for ; Sun, 29 Aug 1999 00:21:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [207.252.88.49] (207.252.90.49) by vjs.org with ESMTP (Eudora Internet Mail Server 2.2); Sun, 29 Aug 1999 03:32:02 -0400 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <199908231636.JAA05262@harrier.prod.itd.earthlink.net> References: <199908231636.JAA05262@harrier.prod.itd.earthlink.net> X-Organization: Little to None X-Mailer: Eudora 5.0 for Cray T3E-1200 Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 03:31:29 -0400 To: Sam Brooks , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Vince Sabio Subject: RE: MSN-Nondeliverable Mail Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk ** Sometime around 09:36 -0700 08/23/1999, Sam Brooks sent us: >I then join your list with me@msn.com >Everything OK, then address bounces. > >MSN notifies you, the listowner, that me@classic.msn.com >in not valid. So, you now send an email command to the >server to uns*b me@classic.msn.com. And what happens, >the server comes back and says, me@classic.msn.com, >is not a member of whatever list. > >Solution: Most of the time, just drop the prefixes >in the email address in front of msn.com and send >the addy in. OR, pull down your subscriber list >and look for the address there. I've never had a >msn member that was not on my subscriber list. >However, most of the time is was just not in a >form the computer would recognize. SmartBounce will automate this address-matching process for you. See http://www.smartbounce.com for more info on bounce handling ad nauseam. __________________________________________________________________________ Vince Sabio Boy & His Sabre: vince-lists@vjs.org Stop Internet Spam! From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 29 16:48:28 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA09043; Sun, 29 Aug 1999 16:37:22 -0700 (PDT) Received: from tor-srs1.netcom.ca (tor-srs1.netcom.ca [207.93.1.148]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id QAA09036 for ; Sun, 29 Aug 1999 16:37:16 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sharon-p133 (ott-on5-27.netcom.ca [207.181.91.91]) by tor-srs1.netcom.ca (8.8.7-s-4/8.8.7) with SMTP id TAA06721 for ; Sun, 29 Aug 1999 19:48:51 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <199908292348.TAA06721@tor-srs1.netcom.ca> X-Sender: sharon@pop.listhost.net X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.0.1 Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 19:33:57 -0400 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Sharon Tucci Subject: Address expansion In-Reply-To: References: <199908231636.JAA05262@harrier.prod.itd.earthlink.net> <199908231636.JAA05262@harrier.prod.itd.earthlink.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk When using majordomo-type list servers, I've had occasional problems with messages delivered to CompuServe and AOL - where the email addresses on those domains were seen by the other subscribers at that domain. It's never been a serious problem - maybe 2-3 times for both CIS and AOL over a few year time period. I've never seen this happen with MSN before, but in the past few days, I've had a few reports from different lists delivered Thursday to Saturday that this has been happening with MSN recipients. (i.e. they see the addresses of any other MSN recipients because the addresses are expanded)) Meanwhile, I know it's not happening with all of our lists. I know that this is not something unique -- before we had our own list hosting service, I'd seen this happen when our own lists were hosted with other companies. Anyone have any ideas on what causes this to happen? I know how the messages are delivered via majordomo-type software (i.e. batches are delivered to each domain rather than an individual message to each address), but the how and why of the addresses being expanded has me baffled. Sharon Tucci From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 30 05:36:38 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id FAA18418; Mon, 30 Aug 1999 05:20:45 -0700 (PDT) Received: from crow.a001.sprintmail.com (crow.prod.itd.earthlink.net [209.178.63.7]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id FAA18411 for ; Mon, 30 Aug 1999 05:20:39 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sarah (sdn-ar-005waseatP307.dialsprint.net [168.191.239.45]) by crow.a001.sprintmail.com (8.8.7/8.8.5) with SMTP id FAA07529; Mon, 30 Aug 1999 05:32:21 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <001201bef2e3$d7626380$2defbfa8@sarah> From: "Chris McEwen" To: , "MLA" Cc: "Sam Brooks" Subject: Smart Bounce Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 05:33:17 -0700 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2615.200 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I have a question on setting up Smart Bounce Lite. I just downloaded it and it seems to be a great tool. I am having a problem identifying a bounce file. I use Outlook Express to read my mail (no need for the flames, please) and filter all my bounces to a particular folder. Q1: Can Smart Bounce use this "folder file" as is? It has an MBX extension which I assume is a proprietary format. Q2A: If answer above is yes, is there a fast way to tell **which** of the 94 folders (numbered 1 through 94 of course) is the folder I want? Q2B: If answer above is no, how would I go about generating a bounce file on a recurring basis? --Chris McEwen reply to: Socrates Press socrates@sprintmail.com From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 30 08:34:58 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id IAA19994; Mon, 30 Aug 1999 08:20:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: from scifi.squawk.com (scifi.squawk.com [208.143.206.18]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id IAA19987 for ; Mon, 30 Aug 1999 08:20:03 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (njs@localhost) by scifi.squawk.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id LAA29892; Mon, 30 Aug 1999 11:31:31 -0400 Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 11:31:30 -0400 (EDT) From: Nick Simicich To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM cc: postfix-users@cloud9.net Subject: Majordomo and Postfix and Approvals, Oh, My! Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Problem: Postfix, by default, uses a special mechanism to quickly catch and thwart mail loops. It places a "delivered-to" header into the mail when it delivers it. If mail is pushed back into postfix, and it is about to deliver it to a place it has already delivered it to, it bounces it instead. This is very effective. It is so effective that it catches even mail loops where the Received lines are stripped. It also catches attempts to approve messages, because the mail will be inserted into the mail queue with a target destination that is already named in a Delivered-To:. This is the problem. Solution 1: Configure postfix to not apply the Delivered-to headers. This is bad, as it completely ditches the mechanism. Solution 2: Change all of the approval tools and procedures to delete the delivered-to headers. This is bad since I have multiple moderators who have their own procedures, written in the scripting language of their choice on different platforms. Solution 3: Ditch Postfix. No. The list users love postfix because they are getting their messages up to 1/2 hour earlier, even though I was using bulk-mailer with sendmail. (They didn't say, "Postfix is great", they said, "Gosh, everything is working a lot quicker now. What did you do?") Postfix delivered 110,000 messages last week. It rarely uses more than a few percent of the CPU (An ancient Pentium 100 running Redhat 6 with 32 Meg). I have tried to dump a big load of stuff on it all at once, it sorts it out real fast, without bouncing messages because of overload. It configures more quickly and sanely than sendmail. It is arguably more secure than sendmail can be, since it is a bunch of small pieces that do not run with more privs than they need, and was written by a security guru with security in mind from the start. I have years of experience with sendmail and I like it. Postfix is just better, especially for this. Solution 4: Have majordomo strip Delivered-to headers in all cases. Same problems as solution 1 - you want this mechanism to work, most of the time, even on majordomo. Solution 5: Change resend to remove Delivered-To: headers from any message that came in as a message body to be Approved after a bounce. Here is a patch. I have a lot of other patches, so expect a bit of offset if you apply it. --- /usr/lib/majordomo/resend Sun Aug 9 16:33:59 1998 +++ resend Mon Aug 30 10:49:32 1999 @@ -40,6 +40,16 @@ #$DEBUG = 1; +#postfix uses "delivered-to" to shortcut detection of loops. +#This is a good thing, unless this is an approved message. +#postfix will see this and bounce the message. +#Approval is one of cases that we want to remove 'Delivered-to' +#We set this later if we see an "approved" header. Then, +#when we drop the message back into postfix, it can be redelivered +#to the same address. + +$kill_delivered_to = 0; + # set our path explicitly # PATH it is set in the wrapper, so there is no need to set it here. #$ENV{'PATH'} = "/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/ucb"; @@ -400,6 +417,10 @@ } # Parse the following as a completely new message. + + # This is a postfix hack. See above. + $kill_delivered_to = 1; + $result .= &parse_header; # The return value won't matter; we're # approved. @@ -597,6 +648,15 @@ if $DEBUG; # check for taboo_headers or approved header # + + # Kill delivered-to headers in approved messages for + # postfix. + if ($kill_delivered_to && /^Delivered\-To\:/i) { + $kept_last = 0; + print STDERR "$0: skipped-delivered-to\n" if $DEBUG; + next; + } + if ($#taboo_headers >= $[ && !$approved && eval $is_taboo_header) { $gonna_bounce .= "taboo header: $taboo "; ------CUT HERE-------- Of course my password is the same as my pet's name. My macaw's name was Q47pY!3, but I change it every 90 days. Nick Simicich mailto:njs@scifi.squawk.com or (last choice) mailto:njs@us.ibm.com http://scifi.squawk.com/njs.html -- Stop by and Light Up The World! From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 30 08:49:50 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id IAA20142; Mon, 30 Aug 1999 08:38:48 -0700 (PDT) Received: from moat02.ieee.org (moat.ieee.org [199.172.136.5]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id IAA20135 for ; Mon, 30 Aug 1999 08:38:43 -0700 (PDT) Received: from aries.ieee.org by moat02.ieee.org via smtpd (for honor.greatcircle.com [198.102.244.44]) with SMTP; 30 Aug 1999 15:50:28 UT Received: from mako.ieee.org by aries.ieee.org (8.8.8+Sun/8.8.8) with SMTP id LAA25828 for ; Mon, 30 Aug 1999 11:50:22 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <199908301550.LAA25828@aries.ieee.org> X-Sender: gsantiag@pop.ieee.org X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.0 Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 11:51:45 -0400 To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Gilberto Santiago Subject: Commercial List Servers Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I need to do some research regarding commercial list servers on the market and I need to know where to start. Are you guys aware of any (Unix or NT)? Have you try them? and lastly based on your experience, How do you compare them with majordomo? Do you find that majordomo is a better choice? Thank you in advance. ========================================================================== Gilberto Santiago Sr. Systems Administrator IEEE, Information Technology Department (732) 562-3975 E-mail: g.santiago@ieee.org ========================================================================== From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 30 09:48:50 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id JAA20700; Mon, 30 Aug 1999 09:47:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: from vjs.org (vjs.telephonet.com [207.252.88.49]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id JAA20693 for ; Mon, 30 Aug 1999 09:47:13 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [207.252.88.49] (207.252.90.49) by vjs.org with ESMTP (Eudora Internet Mail Server 2.2); Mon, 30 Aug 1999 12:58:48 -0400 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <001201bef2e3$d7626380$2defbfa8@sarah> References: <001201bef2e3$d7626380$2defbfa8@sarah> X-Organization: Little to None X-Mailer: Eudora 5.0 for Cray T3E-1200 Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 12:57:59 -0400 To: "Chris McEwen" , , "MLA" From: Vince Sabio Subject: Re: Smart Bounce Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk ** Sometime around 05:33 -0700 08/30/1999, Chris McEwen sent us: >I have a question on setting up Smart Bounce Lite. I just downloaded it and it >seems to be a great tool. > >I am having a problem identifying a bounce file. I use Outlook Express to read >my mail (no need for the flames, please) and filter all my bounces to a >particular folder. > >Q1: Can Smart Bounce use this "folder file" as is? It has an MBX extension >which I assume is a proprietary format. Yes, it is a proprietary format, and the current version of SmartBounce will not recognize it. The next revision, however, (i.e., v5.4) will provide direct support for OE folders. >Q2A: If answer above is yes, is there a fast way to tell **which** of the 94 >folders (numbered 1 through 94 of course) is the folder I want? Not that I know of. >Q2B: If answer above is no, how would I go about generating a bounce file on a >recurring basis? My personal recommendation is to use Eudora Lite. You can use OE for all your personal mail, but use EL solely to download bounces from the POP mailbox to which your bounces are routed. (I'm making some assumptions here; you'll need to tailor to your particular setup.) Since Eudora's mbox format is standard /bin/mail spool file, SmartBounce can process the mailboxes directly. Another bonus: They're easy to find. Since this list is intended for meta-discussions of list ownership, and not any particular software product or MLM, it would be best if questions regarding SmartBounce were sent to me directly at . Future queries about SB will be fielded off-list. Thanks, Vince From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 30 17:18:31 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id RAA25127; Mon, 30 Aug 1999 17:15:35 -0700 (PDT) Received: from scifi.squawk.com (scifi.squawk.com [208.143.206.18]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id RAA25114 for ; Mon, 30 Aug 1999 17:15:25 -0700 (PDT) Received: from tpad.squawk.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by scifi.squawk.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id UAA14622; Mon, 30 Aug 1999 20:26:28 -0400 Message-Id: <3.0.5.32.19990830202037.0346d840@127.0.0.1> X-Sender: njs@127.0.0.1 X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.5 (32) Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 20:20:37 -0400 To: wietse@porcupine.org (Wietse Venema) From: Nick Simicich Subject: Re: Majordomo and Postfix and Approvals, Oh, My! Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM, postfix-users@cloud9.net In-Reply-To: <19990830173858.A4FF74579B@spike.porcupine.org> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 01:38 PM 8/30/99 -0400, Wietse Venema is said to have written: > >Yes, delivered-to is ugly. > >Thanks for the resend patch. This is better than forcing moderators >everywhere to patch their mailing list approval scripts. > >Would it help if the patch was more specific so that it only drops >/^Delivered-To: .*majordomo@/ and leaves other headers intact? In my case, Delivered-To: was usually boucing with values like "glock-l@glock.squawk.com". The bounce value was the actual list name at the postfix host. This is where the person who sent the message sent it, this is where you send it back after approval (this does not bounce, because the extra header is hidden in the body at this point), and this is where the approval process in resend dumps it after approving it. This was the piece that was bouncing for me, and this was what I was trying to fix with this patch. Because, presumably, this requires human intervention, it is safe to delete the Delivered-to at this point. >There's one other solution, suggested long ago on this list, and >that is to count Delivered-To: headers and to allow mail to loop >exactly once. However, that would affect all mail, and not just >mail that being approved. That would have bypassed my problem, but frankly I like this patch better. I have screwed up the aliases-pointing-to-aliases tricks that Majordomo requires more than twice, and I expect to do it again. Delievered-to will help me catch these faster. -- Why does the Porridge Bird lay its egg in the air? Nick Simicich - mailto:njs@scifi.squawk.com http://scifi.squawk.com/njs.html From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 31 11:36:25 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA08213; Tue, 31 Aug 1999 11:10:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mushi.colo.neosoft.com (mushi.colo.neosoft.com [206.109.6.82]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id LAA08206 for ; Tue, 31 Aug 1999 11:10:13 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 7006 invoked from network); 31 Aug 1999 18:22:05 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO bonkers.taronga.com) (10.0.0.1) by 10.1.0.2 with SMTP; 31 Aug 1999 18:22:05 -0000 Received: (from arielle@localhost) by bonkers.taronga.com (8.9.1/8.9.1) id NAA29997 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Tue, 31 Aug 1999 13:22:05 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from arielle) From: Stephanie da Silva Message-Id: <199908311822.NAA29997@bonkers.taronga.com> Subject: Where did the List of Lists go? To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 13:22:05 -0500 (CDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Content-Type: text Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk What happened to vivian Neou's List of Lists? It seemingly vanished off catalog.com. From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 31 19:24:22 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA14198; Tue, 31 Aug 1999 19:09:29 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id TAA14188 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Tue, 31 Aug 1999 19:09:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: from spike.porcupine.org (umbilical.porcupine.org [168.100.189.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id MAA22096 for ; Mon, 30 Aug 1999 12:09:08 -0700 (PDT) Received: by spike.porcupine.org (Postfix, from userid 100) id EFBC0458A9; Mon, 30 Aug 1999 15:20:52 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: Majordomo and Postfix and Approvals, Oh, My! To: choeger@suse.de (Carsten Hoeger) Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 15:20:52 -0400 (EDT) Cc: wietse@porcupine.org, njs@scifi.squawk.com, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM, postfix-users@cloud9.net In-Reply-To: <19990830203649.B1626@suse.de> from Carsten Hoeger at "Aug 30, 99 08:36:49 pm" X-Time-Zone: USA EST, 6 hours behind central European time X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL15 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: <19990830192052.EFBC0458A9@spike.porcupine.org> From: wietse@porcupine.org (Wietse Venema) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Carsten Hoeger: > IMHO, the Delivered-To: mechanism has to be deactivateable. > I removed those lines from source, because we are not able > to use postfix anymore if not. Hey, it is configurable. The default setting is: prepend_delivered_header = command, file, forward There is no need to remove Postfix code for this. Wietse From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 31 19:36:22 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA14268; Tue, 31 Aug 1999 19:10:07 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id TAA14253 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Tue, 31 Aug 1999 19:10:03 -0700 (PDT) Received: from spike.porcupine.org (umbilical.porcupine.org [168.100.189.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id OAA23705 for ; Mon, 30 Aug 1999 14:40:01 -0700 (PDT) Received: by spike.porcupine.org (Postfix, from userid 100) id C5AB0458BD; Mon, 30 Aug 1999 17:51:47 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: Majordomo and Postfix and Approvals, Oh, My! To: choeger@suse.de Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 17:51:47 -0400 (EDT) Cc: wietse@porcupine.org, njs@scifi.squawk.com, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM, postfix-users@cloud9.net In-Reply-To: <19990830215148.A7842@suse.de> from Carsten Hoeger at "Aug 30, 99 09:51:48 pm" X-Time-Zone: USA EST, 6 hours behind central European time X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL15 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: <19990830215147.C5AB0458BD@spike.porcupine.org> From: wietse@porcupine.org (Wietse Venema) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Carsten Hoeger: > On Mon, Aug 30, Wietse Venema wrote: > > > > IMHO, the Delivered-To: mechanism has to be deactivateable. > > > I removed those lines from source, because we are not able > > > to use postfix anymore if not. > > > > Hey, it is configurable. The default setting is: > > > > prepend_delivered_header = command, file, forward > > > > There is no need to remove Postfix code for this. > > Oooops. > Seems like I've not recognized something... This parameter was added only recently. Wietse From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 31 20:06:19 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA14213; Tue, 31 Aug 1999 19:09:42 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id TAA14203 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Tue, 31 Aug 1999 19:09:39 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Cantor.suse.de (Cantor.suse.de [194.112.123.193]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id MAA22377 for ; Mon, 30 Aug 1999 12:40:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Galois.suse.de (Galois.suse.de [194.112.123.130]) by Cantor.suse.de (Postfix) with ESMTP id B13E432CD4; Mon, 30 Aug 1999 21:51:50 +0200 (MEST) Received: from Wotan.suse.de (Wotan.suse.de [10.10.0.1]) by Galois.suse.de (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8D1FE67A9; Mon, 30 Aug 1999 21:51:49 +0200 (MEST) Received: by Wotan.suse.de (Postfix, from userid 247) id 609237F8C; Mon, 30 Aug 1999 21:51:48 +0200 (MEST) Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 21:51:48 +0200 From: Carsten Hoeger To: Wietse Venema Cc: njs@scifi.squawk.com, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM, postfix-users@cloud9.net Subject: Re: Majordomo and Postfix and Approvals, Oh, My! Message-ID: <19990830215148.A7842@suse.de> References: <19990830203649.B1626@suse.de> <19990830192052.EFBC0458A9@spike.porcupine.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.4i In-Reply-To: <19990830192052.EFBC0458A9@spike.porcupine.org>; from Wietse Venema on Mon, Aug 30, 1999 at 03:20:52PM -0400 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Mon, Aug 30, Wietse Venema wrote: > > IMHO, the Delivered-To: mechanism has to be deactivateable. > > I removed those lines from source, because we are not able > > to use postfix anymore if not. > > Hey, it is configurable. The default setting is: > > prepend_delivered_header = command, file, forward > > There is no need to remove Postfix code for this. Oooops. Seems like I've not recognized something... -- mit freundlichen Gruessen, Carsten Hoeger - SuSE Professional Services - SuSE GmbH, Schanzaeckerstr. 10, 90443 Nuernberg, Germany Tel: +49-911-7405356 Mo-Fr 09-17.00, Fax: +49-911-3206727 http://www.suse.de/bsupport/index.html Email: bsupport@suse.de From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 31 20:21:13 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA14185; Tue, 31 Aug 1999 19:09:22 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id TAA14175 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Tue, 31 Aug 1999 19:09:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Cantor.suse.de (Cantor.suse.de [194.112.123.193]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA21705 for ; Mon, 30 Aug 1999 11:25:18 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Galois.suse.de (Galois.suse.de [194.112.123.130]) by Cantor.suse.de (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0B62632D77; Mon, 30 Aug 1999 20:37:04 +0200 (MEST) Received: from Wotan.suse.de (Wotan.suse.de [10.10.0.1]) by Galois.suse.de (Postfix) with ESMTP id 82A7267A9; Mon, 30 Aug 1999 20:36:58 +0200 (MEST) Received: by Wotan.suse.de (Postfix, from userid 247) id C73487F8B; Mon, 30 Aug 1999 20:36:49 +0200 (MEST) Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 20:36:49 +0200 From: Carsten Hoeger To: Wietse Venema Cc: Nick Simicich , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM, postfix-users@cloud9.net Subject: Re: Majordomo and Postfix and Approvals, Oh, My! Message-ID: <19990830203649.B1626@suse.de> References: <19990830173858.A4FF74579B@spike.porcupine.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.4i In-Reply-To: <19990830173858.A4FF74579B@spike.porcupine.org>; from Wietse Venema on Mon, Aug 30, 1999 at 01:38:58PM -0400 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Mon, Aug 30, Wietse Venema wrote: > Nick Simicich: > > Problem: Postfix, by default, uses a special mechanism to quickly catch > > and thwart mail loops. It places a "delivered-to" header into the mail > > when it delivers it. If mail is pushed back into postfix, and it is about > > to deliver it to a place it has already delivered it to, it bounces it > > instead. This is very effective. It is so effective that it catches even > > mail loops where the Received lines are stripped. It also catches > > attempts to approve messages, because the mail will be inserted into the > > mail queue with a target destination that is already named in a > > Delivered-To:. This is the problem. > > Yes, delivered-to is ugly. > > Thanks for the resend patch. This is better than forcing moderators > everywhere to patch their mailing list approval scripts. > > Would it help if the patch was more specific so that it only drops > /^Delivered-To: .*majordomo@/ and leaves other headers intact? > > There's one other solution, suggested long ago on this list, and > that is to count Delivered-To: headers and to allow mail to loop > exactly once. However, that would affect all mail, and not just > mail that being approved. IMHO, the Delivered-To: mechanism has to be deactivateable. I removed those lines from source, because we are not able to use postfix anymore if not. We are using very complex procmail-filters for our support and other nonsingle-user accounts. E.g. mail reaches support, it'll be bounced to some user and if this user is on vacation, it'll be bounced back and postfix does not like this... :-( -- mit freundlichen Gruessen, Carsten Hoeger - SuSE Professional Services - SuSE GmbH, Schanzaeckerstr. 10, 90443 Nuernberg, Germany Tel: +49-911-7405356 Mo-Fr 09-17.00, Fax: +49-911-3206727 http://www.suse.de/bsupport/index.html Email: bsupport@suse.de From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 31 20:36:18 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA14158; Tue, 31 Aug 1999 19:09:12 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id TAA14148 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Tue, 31 Aug 1999 19:09:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: from spike.porcupine.org (umbilical.porcupine.org [168.100.189.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA21156 for ; Mon, 30 Aug 1999 10:27:25 -0700 (PDT) Received: by spike.porcupine.org (Postfix, from userid 100) id A4FF74579B; Mon, 30 Aug 1999 13:38:58 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: Majordomo and Postfix and Approvals, Oh, My! To: njs@scifi.squawk.com (Nick Simicich) Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 13:38:58 -0400 (EDT) Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM, postfix-users@cloud9.net In-Reply-To: from Nick Simicich at "Aug 30, 99 11:31:30 am" X-Time-Zone: USA EST, 6 hours behind central European time X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL15 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: <19990830173858.A4FF74579B@spike.porcupine.org> From: wietse@porcupine.org (Wietse Venema) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Nick Simicich: > Problem: Postfix, by default, uses a special mechanism to quickly catch > and thwart mail loops. It places a "delivered-to" header into the mail > when it delivers it. If mail is pushed back into postfix, and it is about > to deliver it to a place it has already delivered it to, it bounces it > instead. This is very effective. It is so effective that it catches even > mail loops where the Received lines are stripped. It also catches > attempts to approve messages, because the mail will be inserted into the > mail queue with a target destination that is already named in a > Delivered-To:. This is the problem. Yes, delivered-to is ugly. Thanks for the resend patch. This is better than forcing moderators everywhere to patch their mailing list approval scripts. Would it help if the patch was more specific so that it only drops /^Delivered-To: .*majordomo@/ and leaves other headers intact? There's one other solution, suggested long ago on this list, and that is to count Delivered-To: headers and to allow mail to loop exactly once. However, that would affect all mail, and not just mail that being approved. Wietse > Solution 1: Configure postfix to not apply the Delivered-to headers. > This is bad, as it completely ditches the mechanism. > > Solution 2: Change all of the approval tools and procedures to delete the > delivered-to headers. This is bad since I have multiple moderators who > have their own procedures, written in the scripting language of their > choice on different platforms. > > Solution 3: Ditch Postfix. No. The list users love postfix because they > are getting their messages up to 1/2 hour earlier, even though I was using > bulk-mailer with sendmail. (They didn't say, "Postfix is great", they > said, "Gosh, everything is working a lot quicker now. What did you do?") > Postfix delivered 110,000 messages last week. It rarely uses more than a > few percent of the CPU (An ancient Pentium 100 running Redhat 6 with 32 > Meg). I have tried to dump a big load of stuff on it all at once, it sorts > it out real fast, without bouncing messages because of overload. It > configures more quickly and sanely than sendmail. It is arguably more > secure than sendmail can be, since it is a bunch of small pieces that do > not run with more privs than they need, and was written by a security guru > with security in mind from the start. I have years of experience with > sendmail and I like it. Postfix is just better, especially for this. > > Solution 4: Have majordomo strip Delivered-to headers in all cases. Same > problems as solution 1 - you want this mechanism to work, most of the > time, even on majordomo. > > Solution 5: Change resend to remove Delivered-To: headers from any > message that came in as a message body to be Approved after a bounce. > Here is a patch. I have a lot of other patches, so expect a bit of offset > if you apply it. > > > --- /usr/lib/majordomo/resend Sun Aug 9 16:33:59 1998 > +++ resend Mon Aug 30 10:49:32 1999 > @@ -40,6 +40,16 @@ > > #$DEBUG = 1; > > +#postfix uses "delivered-to" to shortcut detection of loops. > +#This is a good thing, unless this is an approved message. > +#postfix will see this and bounce the message. > +#Approval is one of cases that we want to remove 'Delivered-to' > +#We set this later if we see an "approved" header. Then, > +#when we drop the message back into postfix, it can be redelivered > +#to the same address. > + > +$kill_delivered_to = 0; > + > # set our path explicitly > # PATH it is set in the wrapper, so there is no need to set it here. > #$ENV{'PATH'} = "/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/ucb"; > @@ -400,6 +417,10 @@ > } > > # Parse the following as a completely new message. > + > + # This is a postfix hack. See above. > + $kill_delivered_to = 1; > + > $result .= &parse_header; # The return value won't matter; we're > # approved. > > @@ -597,6 +648,15 @@ > if $DEBUG; > # check for taboo_headers or approved header > # > + > + # Kill delivered-to headers in approved messages for > + # postfix. > + if ($kill_delivered_to && /^Delivered\-To\:/i) { > + $kept_last = 0; > + print STDERR "$0: skipped-delivered-to\n" if $DEBUG; > + next; > + } > + > if ($#taboo_headers >= $[ && !$approved && > eval $is_taboo_header) { > $gonna_bounce .= "taboo header: $taboo "; > ------CUT HERE-------- > > Of course my password is the same as my pet's name. > My macaw's name was Q47pY!3, but I change it every 90 days. > Nick Simicich mailto:njs@scifi.squawk.com or (last choice) mailto:njs@us.ibm.com > http://scifi.squawk.com/njs.html -- Stop by and Light Up The World! > > > >