I'm working on the new mailing list system for perl.org. Want to test? Email somelist-subscribe@empty.us to subscribe to the test list, somelist-digest-subscribe@empty.us to subscribe to the digest version. Email somelist-help@empty.us for more commands.
If you subscribe, prepare to get a bunch of test mails, of course. :-) Also, if you subscribe, feel free to send test mails to the list.
Sverything should be working like a regular ezmlm list. The initial version (where it is at now) is just a system for managing the list configuration in database and for replacing all the .qmail-* files with one(!) .qmail-default file calling one program. It's also written so we can make qmail (or another mailer) just write to a Maildir and have Ballistic pick up the mails from there (it emulates qmail-local / qmail-command). It's great.
(if you are curious, then the code is in Subversion, use guest/guest for the login. No documentation yet and I wholeheartedly will not recommend that you try using it just yet).
sounds nifty!
are you planning any kind of web UI for it?
Justin,
Yes, that's part of the motivation.
Start replacing the ezmlm- programs with perl code and build a web interface for users to manage their subscriptions if they don't like the email interface. I also want a web interface for moderating messages, creating new lists and that sort of thing.
- ask
Have you thought of using Siesta or Sympa? Both perl based packages. Seems a bit odd that perl.org always reinvents the wheel (mailing lists manager, mail server, content management ...)?
We are not reinventing ezmlml, we are just replacing some of the C-spokes with Perl-spokes. :-)
I did look at Sympa and Siesta. Sympa didn't fit how we do things at all and the amount of code scared me away.
Siesta needed a lot of work to be a pluggable ezmlm replacement and/or to make it easy for us to manage 100-150 lists. I liked the code and the plugin system and all, but I'm not sure the authors have a lot of experience running many busy lists. If I was just setting up a couple or a dozen of not too busy lists, then there's a good chance I would go with Siesta.
I guess what I am saying is that we really really like ezmlm and we'd like to keep using something that works like ezmlm. (In features and functionality if not in implementation). :-)
For reinventing mail server: When we started qpsmtpd there wasn't anything else quite as feature-rich or flexible. I'm not sure there is now.
For reinventing content management system: We tried Bricolage and at least at the time it didn't fit our workflow (or lack of the same). We really just need a way to publish html and pod files in a reasonable safe way and our controllers (Combust) and Template Toolkit are doing that wonderfully. It's really just Apache::Template on steroids. :-) I'm not sure what the alternatives would be (or was at the time).
- ask
Looking forward to it. be sure to keep the blog updated -- once you've got a mailing list to discuss this mailing list software ;) I'll sign up!
BTW -- I've put together a few wishlist items I think MLMs need; might be worth a look ;)
http://taint.org/wk/MailingListWishlist