Since 2005, our organization has been running a customized version of Mailman 2 with extensions that meet our particular needs. The main novelty is support for /fixed subscription lists/, in which the list members are predetermined (corresponding to a "committee"). Fixed list subscribers are not offered the opportunity to unsubscribe, nor can others add themselves to the list. A further enhancement is /hybrid lists/ which, for example, have both a fixed and opt-in part. (This is implemented as a fixed list residing within an opt-in one in a way which is transparent to users). Our customizations consist of code adjustments (patches) to 23 files.
We are considering moving to Mailman 3 and would like to do this in a way which makes it possible to periodically upgrade our installation to the newest Mailman version, without clobbering our customizations. Thus, I do not think that installing via "pip" is the right approach for us. While I'm relatively new to git and GitLab, they seem to be ideally suited to this situation. If I understand the developer documentation correctly, I start out by creating a "fork" and can later "fetch" changes from the master branch and "rebase" to bring them into our branch.
I would welcome comments on what we are doing. I also wonder whether others might be interested in support for "fixed lists", if they are done in a way which can be "contributed" back into Mailman.
I extend our "thank you" to the developers of Mailman who have provided the robust system which has served us well for 15 years and provides the possibility to extend this into the future.
-Alan
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Alan Kelm Manager, Electronic Services Canadian Mathematical Society Tel: +1 (613) 733-2662 ext. 799
Please consider the environment.
[cms web link] <https://cms.math.ca/> Alan Kelm Chef, services électroniques Société mathématique du Canada Tél : +1 (613) 733-2662 poste 799
Considérez svp l'environnement.