On Jan 25, 2022, at 06:56, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephenjturnbull@gmail.com> wrote:
Or is there a better MLM for simple use cases? I used Majordomo back in the 90s and was happy to get onto Mailman from that. Something similar to Mailman 2.1 in features/functionality.
It's been years since we had an answer to that question. Mark might have more to say, but the last time we were challenged on this, the rival was Sympa, and the conclusion I came to was that the use cases are different.
I prototyped Sympa and mlmmj along with MM3, and found the latter was the closest match to MM2’s feature set. It also provided some features not available with the others, at least not available by default.
Depending on your Linux distro, and your attitude to risk, Python 2 plus Mailman 2 in a container, VM, or even a dedicated host in the DMZ or outside the firewall might be a reasonable solution.
Yes, this is possible. The IETF, the body that defines Internet technical standards, is still on MM2. I’m with them; given my druthers I’d run MM2 forever because it Just Works.
Then again, I put a high priority on keeping the base OS and applications patched against current security vulnerabilities. That’s getting harder to do with MM2.
Debian and FreeBSD have deprecated Python 2. MM2 still has maintenance releases but no new development. MM2 also has some archaic design decisions such as sending user passwords in plaintext email.
Like it or not, MM3 and related components are current, and currently maintained. I wasn’t crazy about the learning curve to get MM3 working, but I pressed on because it will provide a platform I can keep running much farther into the future.
dn