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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