Adrien wrote:

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My humble suggestion to solve all these 4 problems at once, made already but rehearsed here, goes like this: a) authorize by default all and only those email addresses that users have registered against the current openSUSE auth + login system to send to any ML, no matter which

This is doable, a nomail subscription for all. Although many will want a regular subscription. (you can't have both on the same list). Synchronization might be a stumbling block. Also, only one email address is registered (afaik), and many people (incl myself) use multiple.

The backend logic I am assuming is: - - for any message submitted to any ML, if the sender has *some* email address associated with their account, let the message through;

Okay, I'm with you sofar.

where *some email* can be determined in many different ways, for instance: - - in openSUSE user profile (feature: "use this text-field to add as many email addresses as you want our MLs to whitelist for you).

I see a bit of over-engineering? I have to log in, to a system I rarely have any reason to use, navigate unfamiliar territory and add my email address(es). Subscribing isn't much more difficult?

I notice en passant from what you just said that my proposal seems to solve a 5th problem I overlooked in my previous message:

Issue 5) The current system (and mailman3!) enforce subscriptions as 1-1 relations between email addresses and MLs, when in fact there is 0 need for enforcing this if users have sets of addresses whitelisted upstream in the work-flow.

I don't see any issue, it is how mailing list managers work.

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b) handle subscriptions to MLs closer to the literal meaning of subscribing: i.e. open a receiver's channel, nothing less and nothing more.

I'm not sure I really understand what you mean here - the above sounds like what any mailing list manager does already ? i.e. you subscribe to a mailing list and you start receiving traffic.

When you navigate a forum you usually don't need to subscribe to a topic in order to be able to post to it. In that context "subscribing" means "getting notified upon updates to the topic". My suggestion is to move MLs closer to that meaning of "subscribing".

Aha, I see - I never use any webfora, so I wasn't in the right context. Well, some of our lists are in fact open for non-subscribers, quite a few of them. opensuse-factory for instance.

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(a) + (b) solve all four issues, don't open loopholes for spams, and bring the ML worflow closer to the workflow of forums and instant messaging apps, making use of the comfort zone of people who already use these platforms.

Just for the sake of argument - whose comfort zone is more important, the above or those of people who already use mailing lists?

Care to explain in what way my proposal makes a negative impact on the comfort zone of ML people?

As I said - just for the sake of argument. I only meant to suggest you ought to be considering both sides.

Perhaps all this is a nice on paper but is horribly bad as far as cost-efficiency is concerned, which may well be the case if mailman3 does not easily bend to such fine-tunings. I have no way of knowing that beforehand unless I discuss these things here :)

Generally speaking, our (openSUSE's) mailing list manager has to be an appliance, not a bespoke development. If a feature is supported or can easily be done by normal means, we can do it. If a new feature means developing custom code, I am personally not in favour - development is easy, maintenance is the killer. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (15.2°C) Member, openSUSE Heroes -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org