Anyone interested in cosponsoring work on a tighter integration of Plone and Mailman?

[Ben Rudder]

Dear all
Just proving the list is not entirely moribund :-)

We are running a closed site for a trade union project, with multiple  
groups and roles
We are on Plone 2.1 and our developers could find no product robust  
enough to handle email lists from within Plone for each of the groups  
and/or roles
At the moment, we have Mailman running on a separate server, with no  
capability to authenticate mail list users against their Plone  
attributes

We can avoid some of the potential risks of getting inappropriate/
unauthorised users on each of the lists by placing links to Mailman  
sign-up pages in locations in the Plone site requiring appropriate  
permissions, and will be moderating both posts and subscriptions.

But we would prefer that the list membership was able to  
automatically cross-reference against Plone membership attributes to  
avoid too much manual work for administrators if membership grows.

Our developers have suggested some days of research to establish  
development costs, and then the development itself.

We have expressed an interest in finding a solution for the Plone  
community, especially if there is enough interest to find a cosponsor.

Any thoughts?

Regards

Ben Rudder

_______________________________________________
NGO mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/ngo

[Calvin Hendryx-Parker]

Hi All,

We have done such a thing, but it probably needs some cleaning up and  
it was done with CMFMember, which in your case might work fine.  You  
can check out the project here:

http://plone.org/products/mailmanadaptor

It is at a minimum a good starting point.  We did it using XML-RPC so  
mailman and Plone don't need to be on the same server.  Feel free to  
contact me with any other questions about it.

Thanks,
Calvin

On Nov 19, 2007, at 11:17 AM, Ben Rudder wrote:

> Dear all
> Just proving the list is not entirely moribund :-)
>
> We are running a closed site for a trade union project, with  
> multiple groups and roles
> We are on Plone 2.1 and our developers could find no product robust  
> enough to handle email lists from within Plone for each of the  
> groups and/or roles
> At the moment, we have Mailman running on a separate server, with no  
> capability to authenticate mail list users against their Plone  
> attributes
>
> We can avoid some of the potential risks of getting inappropriate/
> unauthorised users on each of the lists by placing links to Mailman  
> sign-up pages in locations in the Plone site requiring appropriate  
> permissions, and will be moderating both posts and subscriptions.
>
> But we would prefer that the list membership was able to  
> automatically cross-reference against Plone membership attributes to  
> avoid too much manual work for administrators if membership grows.
>
> Our developers have suggested some days of research to establish  
> development costs, and then the development itself.
>
> We have expressed an interest in finding a solution for the Plone  
> community, especially if there is enough interest to find a cosponsor.
>
> Any thoughts?
>
> Regards
>
> Ben Rudder
>
> _______________________________________________
> NGO mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/ngo

--
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Silicon Valley: [phone] x602
Midwest: [phone] x602
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_______________________________________________
NGO mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/ngo

[Raphael Ritz]

Ben Rudder wrote:

[..]

> But we would prefer that the list membership was able to automatically
> cross-reference against Plone membership attributes to avoid too much
> manual work for administrators if membership grows.
>

Did you consider "listen"?

http://plone.org/products/listen

Raphael

> Our developers have suggested some days of research to establish
> development costs, and then the development itself.
>
> We have expressed an interest in finding a solution for the Plone
> community, especially if there is enough interest to find a cosponsor.
>
> Any thoughts?
>
> Regards
>
> Ben Rudder

_______________________________________________
NGO mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/ngo

[Ben Rudder]

Thanks for responding Raphael

I'm not a developer, so I'm a bit out of my depth
But I understand that Listen was the product that couldn't cut the  
mustard
We have a possibility of quite high load further down the road  
(several lists, perhaps a few thousand on each)

I got the impression from our developers that they were worried this  
might break things in Plone  if Listen was used
The idea they have is to drive both Plone and Mailman authentication  
from a separate membership data resource. But once again I could be  
blowing air.

The developers are out there somewhere I think -- anyone want to  
pitch in?

>
>> But we would prefer that the list membership was able to  
>> automatically cross-reference against Plone membership attributes  
>> to avoid too much manual work for administrators if membership grows.
>
> Did you consider "listen"?
>
> http://plone.org/products/listen
>
> Raphael
>
>> Our developers have suggested some days of research to establish  
>> development costs, and then the development itself.
>> We have expressed an interest in finding a solution for the Plone  
>> community, especially if there is enough interest to find a  
>> cosponsor.
>> Any thoughts?
>> Regards
>> Ben Rudder
>
>

_______________________________________________
NGO mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/ngo

[Carsten Senger]

Hi Ben,

Ben Rudder wrote:
> We are running a closed site for a trade union project, with multiple
> groups and roles
> We are on Plone 2.1 and our developers could find no product robust
> enough to handle email lists from within Plone for each of the groups
> and/or roles
> At the moment, we have Mailman running on a separate server, with no
> capability to authenticate mail list users against their Plone attributes
 >

> We can avoid some of the potential risks of getting
> inappropriate/unauthorised users on each of the lists by placing links
> to Mailman sign-up pages in locations in the Plone site requiring
> appropriate permissions, and will be moderating both posts and
> subscriptions.
>
> But we would prefer that the list membership was able to automatically
> cross-reference against Plone membership attributes to avoid too much
> manual work for administrators if membership grows.
>
> Our developers have suggested some days of research to establish
> development costs, and then the development itself.
>
> We have expressed an interest in finding a solution for the Plone
> community, especially if there is enough interest to find a cosponsor.

A little off topic because we have no ressources to cosponser
integration. But we, a very small umemployed ngo, had the same problems
some time ago. I skimmed trough the sources of Mailman 2 and did some
research about approaches to extend Mailman 2. Hacking Mailman 2 is
undesireable and was out of question to us, so we opted for the manual
approach.

Our biggest win since then was migrating to Sympa.
(http://www.sympa.org). It's a mailinglist server written in Perl.

If you do some research you should consider migrating to and integrating
Sympa. And it would be a far more flexible solution for the community.

We chose it because
- it's mature and is constandly being developed
- has a serverwide userdb
- can authenticate against different sources (cas, shibboleth and ldap)
- has an advances permission and rule system (authentication scenarios)
- templates for different list types (List Families)
- true virtual hosts were you can use the same listname in different
   hosts.
- a SOAP interface
- RSS-Feeds
- good documentation

cons for us where:
- setup and integration into postfix with virtual domains can be a
   little tricker
- flexible bounce-management (and in general more options) that we had
   to consider
- UI could be more intuitive
- perl
- less known and a smaller userbase

..carsten

_______________________________________________
NGO mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/ngo

[Martin Aspeli-2]

Ben Rudder wrote:

Thanks for responding Raphael

I'm not a developer, so I'm a bit out of my depth
But I understand that Listen was the product that couldn't cut the  
mustard

I got the impression from our developers that they were worried this  
might break things in Plone  if Listen was used

Can you be more specific? I know OpenPlans are using it to good effect.

Martin

[Sisi Nutt]

Hi all,

Carsten Senger wrote:
> Hi Ben,
>
> Ben Rudder wrote:

> A little off topic because we have no ressources to cosponser
> integration. But we, a very small umemployed ngo, had the same problems
> some time ago. I skimmed trough the sources of Mailman 2 and did some
> research about approaches to extend Mailman 2. Hacking Mailman 2 is
> undesireable and was out of question to us, so we opted for the manual
> approach.
>
> Our biggest win since then was migrating to Sympa.
> (http://www.sympa.org). It's a mailinglist server written in Perl.

I'm glad someone else brought Sympa up!

There have already been discussions about integrating Sympa with Plone,
as a replacement for listen (because indeed using the zope/ plone stack
to handle mailing lists for large lists and heavy traffic is not a good
idea). I don't want to go over the reasons why Sympa rather than mailman
cause that is covered by Carsten below.

I did want to say though, that this is something Friends of the Earth
International and Friends of the Earth Netherlands desperatly need, and
I was planning on drumming up support for a sprint to get some
developers together to work on this in the new year. We can't offer
money but we can offer space and logistics for the sprint (in
amsterdam!) and I am hoping FoE Netherlands will be able to provide some
programming skills too.

In the International office we are still using mailman, but I'd like to
migrate to Sympa for alot of reasons. No idea what the migration path is
like but perhaps that's something we could work on together if you find
Sympa interesting too (Carsten I'd appreciate any tips you have but it's
a bit off topic so maybe off list?)

I believe the Sympa community have already been approached about
integration with Plone and were happy with it, but I might have that wrong.

I'm open to the integration being with mailman if that is the majority
wish, and would be still like to help organise a sprint if so, but
perhaps we can discuss which mailing list software to integrate with
first and make a decision as a community?

I think the plone community as a whole would back this, not just in the
NGO world, so maybe we need to move this discussion over to the third
party products list (but not till I've joined that list!!) :-)

Cheers,
and thanks to Ben for bringing this up, I hope we can work together soon :-)
sisi

> If you do some research you should consider migrating to and integrating
> Sympa. And it would be a far more flexible solution for the community.
>
> We chose it because
> - it's mature and is constandly being developed
> - has a serverwide userdb
> - can authenticate against different sources (cas, shibboleth and ldap)
> - has an advances permission and rule system (authentication scenarios)
> - templates for different list types (List Families)
> - true virtual hosts were you can use the same listname in different
>   hosts.
> - a SOAP interface
> - RSS-Feeds
> - good documentation
>
> cons for us where:
> - setup and integration into postfix with virtual domains can be a
>   little tricker
> - flexible bounce-management (and in general more options) that we had
>   to consider
> - UI could be more intuitive
> - perl
> - less known and a smaller userbase
>
> ..carsten
>
> _______________________________________________
> NGO mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/ngo

--
# sisi nutt # extranet coordinator
# Friends of the Earth International
# PO Box 19199 # 1000 GD Amsterdam # The Netherlands
# Tel [phone]  # Fax [phone]  # http://www.foei.org
# email [hidden email] # skype foei_sisi

_______________________________________________
NGO mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/ngo

[Zahid Malik]

Hi

Just to say that we are the team working with Ben on this and
depending on what the best solution might be - we would be happy to
send over a couple of our guys to a sprint in the Netherlands.


Cheers

Zahid

--
Dr Zahid Malik
FRY-IT Limited
503 Enterprise House
1/2 Hatfields
London SE1 9PG
Tel: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
Web: http://www.fry-it.com

On Nov 21, 2007 1:32 PM, sisi <[hidden email]> wrote:

>
> Hi all,
>
> Carsten Senger wrote:
> > Hi Ben,
> >
> > Ben Rudder wrote:
>
> > A little off topic because we have no ressources to cosponser
> > integration. But we, a very small umemployed ngo, had the same problems
> > some time ago. I skimmed trough the sources of Mailman 2 and did some
> > research about approaches to extend Mailman 2. Hacking Mailman 2 is
> > undesireable and was out of question to us, so we opted for the manual
> > approach.
> >
> > Our biggest win since then was migrating to Sympa.
> > (http://www.sympa.org). It's a mailinglist server written in Perl.
>
> I'm glad someone else brought Sympa up!
>
> There have already been discussions about integrating Sympa with Plone,
> as a replacement for listen (because indeed using the zope/ plone stack
> to handle mailing lists for large lists and heavy traffic is not a good
> idea). I don't want to go over the reasons why Sympa rather than mailman
> cause that is covered by Carsten below.
>
> I did want to say though, that this is something Friends of the Earth
> International and Friends of the Earth Netherlands desperatly need, and
> I was planning on drumming up support for a sprint to get some
> developers together to work on this in the new year. We can't offer
> money but we can offer space and logistics for the sprint (in
> amsterdam!) and I am hoping FoE Netherlands will be able to provide some
> programming skills too.
>
> In the International office we are still using mailman, but I'd like to
> migrate to Sympa for alot of reasons. No idea what the migration path is
> like but perhaps that's something we could work on together if you find
> Sympa interesting too (Carsten I'd appreciate any tips you have but it's
> a bit off topic so maybe off list?)
>
> I believe the Sympa community have already been approached about
> integration with Plone and were happy with it, but I might have that wrong.
>
> I'm open to the integration being with mailman if that is the majority
> wish, and would be still like to help organise a sprint if so, but
> perhaps we can discuss which mailing list software to integrate with
> first and make a decision as a community?
>
> I think the plone community as a whole would back this, not just in the
> NGO world, so maybe we need to move this discussion over to the third
> party products list (but not till I've joined that list!!) :-)
>
> Cheers,
> and thanks to Ben for bringing this up, I hope we can work together soon :-)
> sisi
>
>
> > If you do some research you should consider migrating to and integrating
> > Sympa. And it would be a far more flexible solution for the community.
> >
> > We chose it because
> > - it's mature and is constandly being developed
> > - has a serverwide userdb
> > - can authenticate against different sources (cas, shibboleth and ldap)
> > - has an advances permission and rule system (authentication scenarios)
> > - templates for different list types (List Families)
> > - true virtual hosts were you can use the same listname in different
> >   hosts.
> > - a SOAP interface
> > - RSS-Feeds
> > - good documentation
> >
> > cons for us where:
> > - setup and integration into postfix with virtual domains can be a
> >   little tricker
> > - flexible bounce-management (and in general more options) that we had
> >   to consider
> > - UI could be more intuitive
> > - perl
> > - less known and a smaller userbase
> >
> > ..carsten
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > NGO mailing list
> > [hidden email]
> > http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/ngo
>
> --
> # sisi nutt # extranet coordinator
> # Friends of the Earth International
> # PO Box 19199 # 1000 GD Amsterdam # The Netherlands
> # Tel [phone]  # Fax [phone]  # http://www.foei.org
> # email [hidden email] # skype foei_sisi
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> NGO mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/ngo
>

_______________________________________________
NGO mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/ngo

[Jon Stahl]

Sisi, Ben, et al--

We here at ONE/Northwest have a big Sympa install (over 1000 lists, and
200,000 users!), and so we'd be quite interested in Sympa integration.  
We're not big Sympa experts, but we're pretty handy with the Plone. ;-)  

We have a very strong relationship with the crew at ElectricEmbers.net,
who are a progressive hosting firm in the Bay Area who specialize in
high-touch NGO email stuff, and are probably the most knowledgeable
folks in the NGO sector about Sympa (except for maybe the Riseup
folks!).  Not sure if that's relevant (yet).

best,
jon


sisi wrote:

>
> Hi all,
>
> Carsten Senger wrote:
>> Hi Ben,
>>
>> Ben Rudder wrote:
>
>> A little off topic because we have no ressources to cosponser
>> integration. But we, a very small umemployed ngo, had the same
>> problems some time ago. I skimmed trough the sources of Mailman 2 and
>> did some research about approaches to extend Mailman 2. Hacking
>> Mailman 2 is undesireable and was out of question to us, so we opted
>> for the manual approach.
>>
>> Our biggest win since then was migrating to Sympa.
>> (http://www.sympa.org). It's a mailinglist server written in Perl.
>
> I'm glad someone else brought Sympa up!
>
> There have already been discussions about integrating Sympa with
> Plone, as a replacement for listen (because indeed using the zope/
> plone stack to handle mailing lists for large lists and heavy traffic
> is not a good idea). I don't want to go over the reasons why Sympa
> rather than mailman cause that is covered by Carsten below.
>
> I did want to say though, that this is something Friends of the Earth
> International and Friends of the Earth Netherlands desperatly need,
> and I was planning on drumming up support for a sprint to get some
> developers together to work on this in the new year. We can't offer
> money but we can offer space and logistics for the sprint (in
> amsterdam!) and I am hoping FoE Netherlands will be able to provide
> some programming skills too.
>
> In the International office we are still using mailman, but I'd like
> to migrate to Sympa for alot of reasons. No idea what the migration
> path is like but perhaps that's something we could work on together if
> you find Sympa interesting too (Carsten I'd appreciate any tips you
> have but it's a bit off topic so maybe off list?)
>
> I believe the Sympa community have already been approached about
> integration with Plone and were happy with it, but I might have that
> wrong.
>
> I'm open to the integration being with mailman if that is the majority
> wish, and would be still like to help organise a sprint if so, but
> perhaps we can discuss which mailing list software to integrate with
> first and make a decision as a community?
>
> I think the plone community as a whole would back this, not just in
> the NGO world, so maybe we need to move this discussion over to the
> third party products list (but not till I've joined that list!!) :-)
>
> Cheers,
> and thanks to Ben for bringing this up, I hope we can work together
> soon :-)
> sisi
>
>> If you do some research you should consider migrating to and
>> integrating Sympa. And it would be a far more flexible solution for
>> the community.
>>
>> We chose it because
>> - it's mature and is constandly being developed
>> - has a serverwide userdb
>> - can authenticate against different sources (cas, shibboleth and ldap)
>> - has an advances permission and rule system (authentication scenarios)
>> - templates for different list types (List Families)
>> - true virtual hosts were you can use the same listname in different
>>   hosts.
>> - a SOAP interface
>> - RSS-Feeds
>> - good documentation
>>
>> cons for us where:
>> - setup and integration into postfix with virtual domains can be a
>>   little tricker
>> - flexible bounce-management (and in general more options) that we had
>>   to consider
>> - UI could be more intuitive
>> - perl
>> - less known and a smaller userbase
>>
>> ..carsten
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> NGO mailing list
>> [hidden email]
>> http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/ngo
>

_______________________________________________
NGO mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/ngo

[Rob Miller]

sisi wrote:
> There have already been discussions about integrating Sympa with Plone,
> as a replacement for listen (because indeed using the zope/ plone stack
> to handle mailing lists for large lists and heavy traffic is not a good
> idea). I don't want to go over the reasons why Sympa rather than mailman
> cause that is covered by Carsten below.

while i agree that there will be a number of advantages to using a more
developed mailing list solution that listen, i don't actually agree that there
is something inherently wrong w/ using listen for large lists and heavy
traffic.  the ZODB is a great store, it scales very well, it's nice and indexable.

most Plone objects are AT based, and are very heavy and very slow.  the listen
objects are very light, so they serialize and deserialize very quickly, and i
don't really foresee any problems with big lists.  you'll definitely want to
use MaildropHost to take the mail delivery out of the Zope process, however.

listen is certainly not as developed or road-tested as Sympa, nor does it have
as large a user community, so i can understand if folks choose the more tested
platform.  but saying that it's inherently a poor choice for large lists and
heavy traffic is uninformed FUD, IMO.

-r


_______________________________________________
NGO mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/ngo

[paul roeland]

Rob Miller wrote:

>
> while i agree that there will be a number of advantages to using a more
> developed mailing list solution that listen, i don't actually agree that
> there is something inherently wrong w/ using listen for large lists and
> heavy traffic.  the ZODB is a great store, it scales very well, it's
> nice and indexable.
>
> most Plone objects are AT based, and are very heavy and very slow.  the
> listen objects are very light, so they serialize and deserialize very
> quickly, and i don't really foresee any problems with big lists.  you'll
> definitely want to use MaildropHost to take the mail delivery out of the
> Zope process, however.

Good to hear this, and maybe there are ways we could expand and/or
improve listen. My main concerns about listen, and the strong points of
Sympa, do not revolve around using the ZODB for storage, however. I'm
quite confident the ZODB could handle things like archives while doing
backflips.
It mainly has to do with sending performance:

- Sympa has smart mechanisms to avoid overfeeding mailservers, and
combining addresses from the same domain. That is vital if your
listmembers number around hundredthousand or more per list. As far as I
know, MaildropHost is not that advanced.

- bounce management is also a big issue if around 30% of a large
mailshot bounces, which is not uncommon.

- Sympa also has features for "dynamic" lists, where you basically send
out an email to all addresses satisfying an LDAP and/or SQL query. Maybe
that could be integrated into listen. Quite often, the addresses come
out of external sources like CRM systems, data entry bureaus, etcetera.
So a 'loose' coupling, where you can easily integrate addresses from
external sources but also throw them away after use, is desirable.


>
> listen is certainly not as developed or road-tested as Sympa, nor does
> it have as large a user community, so i can understand if folks choose
> the more tested platform.  but saying that it's inherently a poor choice
> for large lists and heavy traffic is uninformed FUD, IMO.
>

Don't get me wrong, listen is nice. Plus it has a friendly user
interface, whereas the Sympa webinterface is basically an excercise in
user hostility. It's just that they've got the scaling issues very well
nailed down, especially in the 'backend' services like actually SMTP'ing
and dealing with bounces.

So maybe we could think along the lines of using Sympa as a supercharged
replacement for MaildropHost, and leave the archiving and user interface
to listen.


Paul Roeland
Friends of the Earth Netherlands

_______________________________________________
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[hidden email]
http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/ngo

[Steve McMahon]

Rob's point on the ZODB is well taken, but there are some other
considerations for large lists that may make specialization desirable.

A good large list manager does things like SMTP aggregation (pulling
together destination addresses for the same MX and submitting them in a
single transaction); setting VERP headers that work with the SMTP agent;
retrying local addresses; automating bounce handling, scoring, and
subscriber deactivation; maintaining a queue that may need to be
processed over days; etc.

Rob Miller wrote:

> sisi wrote:
>> There have already been discussions about integrating Sympa with
>> Plone, as a replacement for listen (because indeed using the zope/
>> plone stack to handle mailing lists for large lists and heavy traffic
>> is not a good idea). I don't want to go over the reasons why Sympa
>> rather than mailman cause that is covered by Carsten below.
>
> while i agree that there will be a number of advantages to using a more
> developed mailing list solution that listen, i don't actually agree that
> there is something inherently wrong w/ using listen for large lists and
> heavy traffic.  the ZODB is a great store, it scales very well, it's
> nice and indexable.
>
> most Plone objects are AT based, and are very heavy and very slow.  the
> listen objects are very light, so they serialize and deserialize very
> quickly, and i don't really foresee any problems with big lists.  you'll
> definitely want to use MaildropHost to take the mail delivery out of the
> Zope process, however.
>
> listen is certainly not as developed or road-tested as Sympa, nor does
> it have as large a user community, so i can understand if folks choose
> the more tested platform.  but saying that it's inherently a poor choice
> for large lists and heavy traffic is uninformed FUD, IMO.
>
> -r

______________________________________________________

Steve McMahon
Reid-McMahon, LLC
[hidden email]
[hidden email]

_______________________________________________
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[hidden email]
http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/ngo

[Sisi Nutt]

Hi all,

I'd like to reignite this discussion because it kind of trailed off and
I think it's important. I hope I have not left it too late!

Some summary points (as I see them):

- There is alot of interest in the plone community in both listen and
tighter mailing list integration with Plone.

- Those that want integration with mailman or sympa like the way listen
does things, and would prefer integration with listen rather than
reinventing the wheel.

- If you combine those working on and using listen and those looking for
a way to integrate their favourite mailing list manager, we have a
powerful section of the community ready to (continue) development of
listen/ mailing list integration, and therefore could have an (even
better) kick ass product.

I'm not a developer and I've already shown my ignorance on these things,
but I trust both Paul Roeland and Steve McMahon's comments on the
sending performance of Zope vs the sending performance of dedicated
mailing list software. I do however think that this should be irrelevant
in this discussion from now on, because it's becoming a "vi vs emacs"
discussion.

We know that listen as it stands now works well for many mailing list
models, as has been pointed out by Rob Miller. I don't think anyone
wants to throw the baby out with the bath water, and no one wants to
spread FUD about listen (let me say it again, we think it's a GREAT
product, and would rather work with it than along side it or against it).

My suggestion is this:
Listen to be enhanced with the choice to plug-in to either MaildropHost,
mailman or sympa. I would also suggest that the default is however
listen stands now, with config switches for defining an over riding
mailing list software such as mailman or sympa.

I have no idea how easy this is, but I would rather we start talking
about the technical feasability of a model like this, and get constructive.

As I said before, Friends of the Earth International could organise a
sprint in amsterdam, and it would be great if we could work with Rob,
people from OpenPlans and other people from the States during the same
time period (OneNW for instance if they are interested).

I am copying in the listen list, but not the products list because I am
still not sure where this discussion should happen. If anyone wants to
move this discussion on to a more appropriate mailing list please do so,
but then please let this list know so we can all follow the discussion.
I don't want to have the discussion in two different places as happens
sometimes!

Happy New Year everyone!
sisi

Paul Roeland wrote:

> Rob Miller wrote:
>>
>> while i agree that there will be a number of advantages to using a
>> more developed mailing list solution that listen, i don't actually
>> agree that there is something inherently wrong w/ using listen for
>> large lists and heavy traffic.  the ZODB is a great store, it scales
>> very well, it's nice and indexable.
>>
>> most Plone objects are AT based, and are very heavy and very slow.  
>> the listen objects are very light, so they serialize and deserialize
>> very quickly, and i don't really foresee any problems with big lists.  
>> you'll definitely want to use MaildropHost to take the mail delivery
>> out of the Zope process, however.
>
> Good to hear this, and maybe there are ways we could expand and/or
> improve listen. My main concerns about listen, and the strong points of
> Sympa, do not revolve around using the ZODB for storage, however. I'm
> quite confident the ZODB could handle things like archives while doing
> backflips.
> It mainly has to do with sending performance:
>
> - Sympa has smart mechanisms to avoid overfeeding mailservers, and
> combining addresses from the same domain. That is vital if your
> listmembers number around hundredthousand or more per list. As far as I
> know, MaildropHost is not that advanced.
>
> - bounce management is also a big issue if around 30% of a large
> mailshot bounces, which is not uncommon.
>
> - Sympa also has features for "dynamic" lists, where you basically send
> out an email to all addresses satisfying an LDAP and/or SQL query. Maybe
> that could be integrated into listen. Quite often, the addresses come
> out of external sources like CRM systems, data entry bureaus, etcetera.
> So a 'loose' coupling, where you can easily integrate addresses from
> external sources but also throw them away after use, is desirable.
>
>
>>
>> listen is certainly not as developed or road-tested as Sympa, nor does
>> it have as large a user community, so i can understand if folks choose
>> the more tested platform.  but saying that it's inherently a poor
>> choice for large lists and heavy traffic is uninformed FUD, IMO.
>>
>
> Don't get me wrong, listen is nice. Plus it has a friendly user
> interface, whereas the Sympa webinterface is basically an excercise in
> user hostility. It's just that they've got the scaling issues very well
> nailed down, especially in the 'backend' services like actually SMTP'ing
> and dealing with bounces.
>
> So maybe we could think along the lines of using Sympa as a supercharged
> replacement for MaildropHost, and leave the archiving and user interface
> to listen.
>
>
> Paul Roeland
> Friends of the Earth Netherlands
>
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