[fossil-users] Mailing list shutting down...

Post by Richard Hipp
Your suggestions are welcomed.

Call me crazy, but what about a simple discussion board system built into Fossil itself? That way all the existing Fossil security code could be utilized. It could be distributed and you could push/pull conversation threads as artifacts. It could send out email notifications much as a mailing list does, but you'd need to log into the Fossil UI to post. Or if you wanted to post via email perhaps one could attach some kind of key to prove authenticity (or maybe use GPG mail or something?)

This way you could use the same code for SQLite as you do for Fossil to host the SQLite list.

There could be full-text searching with the FTS5 plugin.

etc.

Martin Gagnon

2018-06-13 11:49:57 UTC

Just brainstorming here: May be a kind of "mailing list" and/or "forum"
feature could be added to Fossil itself ?

Fossil would become even more an alternative to github+git.

Of course this would be a long-term work.

This is just a random thought, it might be a bad idea, Iâm not sure what to
think about it.

(Sorry for top posting and brevity, on mobile)

â
Martin G.

Post by Richard Hipp
Unfortunately, I'm going to need to shut down this mailing list due to
robot harassment. I am working to come up with a fix or an
alternative now. Your suggestions are welcomed.
This mailing list has operated for many years using GNU MailMan.
Unfortunately, that software is not able to cope with modern robot
spammers, even with the latest updates. And the source code for
MailMan is sufficiently opaque that I am unable to work on it.
The most recent problem is that robots are visiting the subscription
page and entering innocent user's email addresses and names. This
causes a confirmation email to be sent to that user. If it were just
single confirmation email that the user could ignore, that would be
fine. But apparently MailMan sends one email for each subscription
request. The robots have figured this out and are putting in hundreds
of subscription requests for the same individual, apparently to harass
them.
I have already suspended new subscriptions. Existing subscribers will
be able to continue using this list until I come up with a replacement
(or a fix to the current problem) but no new subscribers will be
accepted.
--
D. Richard Hipp
_______________________________________________
fossil-users mailing list
http://lists.fossil-scm.org:8080/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fossil-users

Joerg Sonnenberger

2018-06-13 12:56:20 UTC

Does the patch from
https://www.dragonsreach.it/2014/05/03/adding-recaptcha-support-to-mailman/
work?

Joerg

Richard Hipp

2018-06-13 13:10:48 UTC

Post by Joerg Sonnenberger
Does the patch from
https://www.dragonsreach.it/2014/05/03/adding-recaptcha-support-to-mailman/
work?

I have not. On the other hand, that patch has apparently been
available for 4 years and has not yet be folded into the official GNU
MailMan. Is Mailman still supported?

I've been a subscriber to the GNU MailMan mailing list for a long
while. Traffic is very light. One gets the idea that it is not
actively maintained.

Other issues with GNU MailMan:

(1) Only works with Apache. Or, at least, I have only been able to
get it to work with apache. That means I have to run a separate
apache server just to operation MailMan, whereas the rest of SQLite
and Fossil uses a non-apache solution.

(2) We keep having problems with evil subscribers harvesting the email
addresses of innocent posters and send them porn-spam via private
email. Since the porn-spam contain the subject line of the original
posting, it often makes it through spam filters. MailMan has not
effective solution to this.

(3) GNU MailMan is a pile of Python, spread out across many
directories in magical places all over the filesystem. It is sparsely
documented (that I have been able to find) and difficult to work on.

For all of the above reasons, I think the time has come to abandon GNU
MailMan for something better - something that I have more control
over.

I'm currently writing my own. But I am open to suggestions.

If anyone reading this wants to call my on skype and talk me through
patching GNU MailMan to get it working again, I am open to that idea
too.

--
D. Richard Hipp
***@sqlite.org

Peter Vonča

2018-06-13 13:37:35 UTC

If you're going to write your own, are you going to use wapp? Sounds like a
good use case to me.

You could use some open source forum software, plenty around and some of
them even support sqlite as a backend, on the other hand it's all written
in PHP ...
There's also Slack and Discord if you like that sort of thing.

Post by Joerg Sonnenberger

Post by Joerg Sonnenberger
Does the patch from
https://www.dragonsreach.it/2014/05/03/adding-recaptcha-

support-to-mailman/

Post by Joerg Sonnenberger
work?

I have not. On the other hand, that patch has apparently been
available for 4 years and has not yet be folded into the official GNU
MailMan. Is Mailman still supported?
I've been a subscriber to the GNU MailMan mailing list for a long
while. Traffic is very light. One gets the idea that it is not
actively maintained.
(1) Only works with Apache. Or, at least, I have only been able to
get it to work with apache. That means I have to run a separate
apache server just to operation MailMan, whereas the rest of SQLite
and Fossil uses a non-apache solution.
(2) We keep having problems with evil subscribers harvesting the email
addresses of innocent posters and send them porn-spam via private
email. Since the porn-spam contain the subject line of the original
posting, it often makes it through spam filters. MailMan has not
effective solution to this.
(3) GNU MailMan is a pile of Python, spread out across many
directories in magical places all over the filesystem. It is sparsely
documented (that I have been able to find) and difficult to work on.
For all of the above reasons, I think the time has come to abandon GNU
MailMan for something better - something that I have more control
over.
I'm currently writing my own. But I am open to suggestions.
If anyone reading this wants to call my on skype and talk me through
patching GNU MailMan to get it working again, I am open to that idea
too.
--
D. Richard Hipp
_______________________________________________
fossil-users mailing list
http://lists.fossil-scm.org:8080/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fossil-users

Richard Hipp

2018-06-13 14:05:15 UTC

Post by Peter VonÄa
If you're going to write your own, are you going to use wapp? Sounds like a
good use case to me.

Maybe.

My current tthinking is to use a hybrid approach where subscribers get
emails just like ordinary mailing lists, but posting and replying is
via web-form only. In other words, you cannot send email back to the
mailing list. Web-form only post and reply makes it much easier to
control spam.

I would like to provide users the option to send messages formatted
using Markdown. Are there Markdown libraries available in TCL that I
can use, that you know of?

--
D. Richard Hipp
***@sqlite.org

Thomas Burdick

2018-06-13 14:10:48 UTC

Le 13/06/2018 16:05, « fossil-users au nom de Richard Hipp » <fossil-users-***@lists.fossil-scm.org au nom de ***@sqlite.org> a écrit :

I would like to provide users the option to send messages formatted
using Markdown. Are there Markdown libraries available in TCL that I
can use, that you know of?

There is, and it's MIT licensed, too.
https://core.tcl.tk/tcllib/doc/trunk/embedded/www/tcllib/files/modules/markdown/markdown.html
https://core.tcl.tk/tcllib/artifact/cf491fc7741e1a23

Svyatoslav Mishyn

2018-06-13 14:10:54 UTC

Post by Richard Hipp
I would like to provide users the option to send messages formatted
using Markdown. Are there Markdown libraries available in TCL that I
can use, that you know of?

Written in pure Tcl?
Or is it OK to use Tcl bindings to existing C Markdown libraries?

http://wiki.tcl.tk/28965#pagetoca6cf0b79

--
https://www.juef.space/

Warren Young

2018-06-13 15:11:30 UTC

Post by Richard Hipp
My current tthinking is to use a hybrid approach where subscribers get
emails just like ordinary mailing lists, but posting and replying is
via web-form only.

If you do this atop Fossil, then you end up inches away from being able to provide an oft-wanted feature: email notifications on checkins, wiki article changes, and other Fossil events.

Post by Richard Hipp
Web-form only post and reply makes it much easier to control spam.

Consider allowing editing as well. I’ve found that I’ve become accustomed to pushing “submit” earlier than I would have in the past, due to Stack Exchange, Hacker News, VCSes, etc. because you can later correct typos, grammar errors, and clarity problems; but with email, once it’s sent, it’s unchangeable. Hence, I’ve been making increasing numbers of spelling, grammar, and clarity errors in mailing list posts.

This would be easy to build atop Fossil, being only a slight tweak on its normal use case.

Post by Richard Hipp
I would like to provide users the option to send messages formatted
using Markdown. Are there Markdown libraries available in TCL that I
can use, that you know of?

This is another thing you’d get for free by building it atop Fossil.

Is there anything wrong with making this web/email feature set dependent on linking Fossil with the platform Tcl, so that you have access to the full Tcl ecosystem, as opposed to Jim Tcl?

That in turn would open the door to Tcl hooks.

Richard Hipp

2018-06-13 15:18:47 UTC

Post by Warren Young
If you do this atop Fossil, then you end up inches away from being able to
provide an oft-wanted feature: email notifications on checkins, wiki article
changes, and other Fossil events.

Indeed, there are many advantages to just tacking a forum capability
onto Fossil. But there are also disadvantages. The biggest problem I
see is that one does not necessarily want the standard Fossil page
header and footer to appear on the forum pages. People looking for
help with an SQLite question do not need to see "Timeline", "Files",
"Branches", "Tags", and "Tickets" menu items across the top of the
page. (ex: https://www.sqlite.org/src/doc/trunk/README.md)

--
D. Richard Hipp
***@sqlite.org

Warren Young

2018-06-13 16:30:20 UTC

Indeed, there are many advantages to just tacking a forum capability
onto Fossil.

Let’s list them:

1. Lots of “free” infrastructure: user management, role-based access control, web framework, wiki and Markdown to HTML formatters, durable and efficient message storage with deltas, pre-designed shunning mechanism.

2. Everyone who clones a Fossil project repository would henceforth also get a clone of the project’s message traffic.

3. Forum posts can show up in the timeline.

4. Forum posts will be able to ink to Fossil artifacts in the same way that checkin comments, wiki articles, and such can today.

5. Vice versa: a checkin comment can say “Closes issue raised in forum post [abcd1234]” and get an automatic *and durable* link to the post. (How many web mail archives have gone away or broken their link structure since the SQLite ML was started?)

6. Trivially-implemented delayed offline replies: sync the project repo before you go off-network, write your forum message replies on the airplane, in the tent, etc. then sync when you get back into the warm wifi bath to push all your replies out.

Post by Richard Hipp
But there are also disadvantages. The biggest problem I
see is that one does not necessarily want the standard Fossil page
header and footer to appear on the forum pages.

That’s a small cost, and arguably not a cost at all. If you’re at the SQLite project web site and are posting a message, you might well want to make use of other Fossil services while you’re there.

The forum feature may well have a sub-header, but that doesn’t argue against having a top-level header linking to other site services.

Hacker News, Stack Exchange, Slashdot and other forum sites offer services other than messaging in their top-level site headers.

Post by Richard Hipp
People looking for
help with an SQLite question do not need to see "Timeline", "Files",
"Branches", "Tags", and "Tickets" menu items across the top of the
page. (ex: https://www.sqlite.org/src/doc/trunk/README.md)

Some may, and those that don’t need it can ignore it.

Richard Hipp

2018-06-13 21:12:37 UTC

Post by Richard Hipp
Indeed, there are many advantages to just tacking a forum capability
onto Fossil.

2. Everyone who clones a Fossil project repository would henceforth also get
a clone of the project’s message traffic.

This is not necessarily an advantage. We I have found is that forum
and ticket traffic far exceeds the amount of source code. Furthermore
this kind of traffic does not lend itself well to delta compression.
And so what you would likely encounter is that clones would swell
uncontrollably with most of the extra space going to extraneous and
noisy forum traffic. This is especially true if attachments are
allowed on forum posts, because what I have found is that you will
quickly accumulate many multi-megabyte incompressible screenshot
attachments. It doesn't take too many people attaching screenshots
off of their hi-res "retinue" screen to give you 1GB clone bandwidth
even for a smaller project.

Post by Warren Young
3. Forum posts can show up in the timeline.

Yikes. I think I would certainly want that to be turned off by default.

Post by Warren Young
4. Forum posts will be able to ink to Fossil artifacts in the same way that
checkin comments, wiki articles, and such can today.
5. Vice versa: a checkin comment can say “Closes issue raised in forum post
[abcd1234]” and get an automatic *and durable* link to the post. (How many
web mail archives have gone away or broken their link structure since the
SQLite ML was started?)
6. Trivially-implemented delayed offline replies: sync the project repo
before you go off-network, write your forum message replies on the airplane,
in the tent, etc. then sync when you get back into the warm wifi bath to
push all your replies out.

These last three are nice ideas. But they depend on (2) which comes
with associated bandwidth and storage overhead.

My current design does not automatically sync forum content. I might
add the ability to sync forum traffic separately, using a separate
command, just as one can now optionally sync unversioned content using
the "fossil uv sync" command. But that will come later, if at all.

--
D. Richard Hipp
***@sqlite.org

Scott Doctor

2018-06-13 21:33:36 UTC

Just my 2 cents. I do not think including a forum module in
fossil is a good idea. Forum software is an entire project by
itself. Over the years I tried various open source forum
software for my various project websites. Simple Machines Forum
(SMF) is the go-to one that I use. It has various anti-spam
modules and add-ons that work well and is easy to setup,
administer, and moderate. Plenty of options to configure with as
little or as much protection as desired.

https://www.simplemachines.org/

I think a forum is a better way to go. Easy to search and browse
topics. Have just a few boards. SQLite, Fossil, FAQ, maybe a
couple of others. I find forums that use too many boards
annoying and difficult to decide which board I should post a
specific question. Email addresses can be hidden so the issue of
scrapping goes away.

SMF (and most other forum software) allows private messaging. So
it is never necessary for anyone to have a specific persons
email thereby solving the main issue.

-------------------------
Scott Doctor
***@scottdoctor.com
-------------------------

Warren Young

2018-06-13 23:44:48 UTC

Post by Richard Hipp
I have found is that forum
and ticket traffic far exceeds the amount of source code.

I just exported my local 6-year archive of the SQLite mailing list traffic to an mbox file, then gzipped it, yielding a 31 MB file. The current sqlite.fossil file is 51 MB.

If we do a linear projection back to the start of the mailing list — August 2002, according to MARC — then we’d expect the full ML archive to be roughly 100 MB, not counting the -dev list and such.

That estimate includes the peak in traffic many years ago:

https://imgur.com/a/UdQ5ziH

That chart shows that the SQLite-Users mailing list is “dying,” in that its message volume is currently lower than near the mailing list’s beginning, despite the much greater popularity of the library these days. I ascribe that to an increasing percentage of questions having web-searchable answers now, plus a decreasing willingness to put up with mailing lists.

(I just corrected a funny autocorrect: malign lists. :) )

My gzipped mbox test is worse than a Fossil-based solution, which:

1. would not have all of those redundant RFC 822 mail header labels;

2. would not need many of the message header lines at all (e.g. X-Abuse-Info or List-Unsubscribe); and

3. would not store many of the fields in inefficient plain text forms within the SQLite DB. (e.g. Delivery-Date might be a time_t stored in an INTEGER column rather than the verbose text RFC 822 format, and if not, then it would probably be the more compact ISO 8601 format so as to make the SQLite date/time routines happy.)

There would be no extra disk space cost on sqlite.org, since I assume you’re already keeping a mailing list archive there.

The extra space on the wire during cloning can be solved in the same way /uv is handled today, if need be.

Post by Richard Hipp
this kind of traffic does not lend itself well to delta compression.

In fact, delta compression would benefit two use cases of the Fossil Forum Feature:

1. The post editing case, just as with Fossil wiki articles today.

2. Quotations in replies.

Granted, a forum feature would lower the current /stat compression ratios, but we’re not really after high compression ratios for their own sake, are we? We’re using compression to solve problems: inter-version redundancy, the low information density of prose and high-level language code, etc.

Forum posts would be highly compressible by zlib. The uncompressed mbox file in the tests above is about 5x the size of the gzipped version.

Post by Richard Hipp
extraneous and noisy forum traffic.

One man’s noise is another man’s signal.

It would be very nice to be able to search the mailing list from within Fossil UI, getting only one copy of each matching message, not one from mail-archive.com, one from MARC, one from Nabble, one from …

I happen know where we can get a pretty good FTS implementation. ;)

This feature would be even more useful on private projects, where we cannot rely on the likes of mail-archive.com to gather and index our discussions.

Post by Richard Hipp
This is especially true if attachments are
allowed on forum posts

You can fob that off on third-party services like Imgur, for the most part, just as Stack Exchange does.

If a post really really needs a repo-embedded attachment, it can use an embedded doc link, just as you’d do for a Fossil wiki article today.

Post by Warren Young
3. Forum posts can show up in the timeline.

Yikes. I think I would certainly want that to be turned off by default.

The timeline search type field defaults to “Check-ins”, does it not? You’d only see forum posts with “Any Type” selected or with a new “Forum Posts” filter selected.

Even then, it should be quite manageable. With the default 100 event search window size, you’d still be seeing several days of activity with the current level of SQLite mailing list traffic, most of the time. SQLite’s mailing list traffic must be somewhere over the 90th percentile in terms of daily traffic, so most Fossil-hosted software projects would show even more days of activity in that 100 event window.

To clarify, I don’t mean that the whole forum post would show up in the Timeline, just a brief summary, as currently happens with tickets and wiki article events.

John Pateman

2018-06-14 09:51:58 UTC

I can see the advantages having an additional focussed collaborative tool within Fossil - it would be a very useful feature for small groups to discuss design decisions/progress and bug fixing. Linking to email especially for the bug tracker has also been a long requested feature. I can see this as a very useful feature for discussion & focussed development within a a small /medium sized team. I would also like to see something like the Kanban style board showcased a couple of years back be integrated too as this would also be a major improvement to the bug tracker and aid collaboration (but that is a separate issue).

However, a forum for a bigger project like Fossil is bit different. the membership is much wider and members are not all part of the development team. The nature of the use case is different as well - it is not primarily to do with developing the project but rather to search for solution to a problem or advice on the best approach and possible solutions. It does not need to be so focussed on work allocation, attribution & blame/praise. The board should be easily searched and ideally tagged. There are numerous open source forum software options as outlined by previous contributors. Most/all support RSS notifications. I subscribe to a Discourse based board which works extremely well - it provides an email interface - you can receive emails for every post or only ones you chose to watch, ones you reply to or initiate. So you can use it as a lightweight RSS/email based subscription or access it via a full web interface. It is easy to search, supports markdown and has a simple clean interface. I am not sure about the capabilities of the other suggestions but I am sure they are generally capable and widely used. Whilst it is obviously important that the content of a forum is reliable, managing the posts within the repository as individual commits sounds like an unnecessary complication. Whilst it might seem very shallow, I think people jump to conclusions about the currency of a project by its look - I think that some of the more modern forum software options would help to support the belief that Fossil is alive and well.

tl;dr
Horses for Courses. I am really not sure it is worth reinventing the wheel as most of the alternative forum solutions are very capable. However a collaboration tool within Fossil would be a very good idea especially for a small team but I donât think it would be so useful for this particular issue i.e. an open-access forum group.

John Pateman

Post by Richard Hipp
Indeed, there are many advantages to just tacking a forum capability
onto Fossil.

2. Everyone who clones a Fossil project repository would henceforth also get
a clone of the projectâs message traffic.

Post by Warren Young
3. Forum posts can show up in the timeline.

Yikes. I think I would certainly want that to be turned off by default.

Post by Warren Young
4. Forum posts will be able to ink to Fossil artifacts in the same way that
checkin comments, wiki articles, and such can today.
5. Vice versa: a checkin comment can say âCloses issue raised in forum post
[abcd1234]â and get an automatic *and durable* link to the post. (How many
web mail archives have gone away or broken their link structure since the
SQLite ML was started?)
6. Trivially-implemented delayed offline replies: sync the project repo
before you go off-network, write your forum message replies on the airplane,
in the tent, etc. then sync when you get back into the warm wifi bath to
push all your replies out.

These last three are nice ideas. But they depend on (2) which comes
with associated bandwidth and storage overhead.
My current design does not automatically sync forum content. I might
add the ability to sync forum traffic separately, using a separate
command, just as one can now optionally sync unversioned content using
the "fossil uv sync" command. But that will come later, if at all.
--
D. Richard Hipp
_______________________________________________
fossil-users mailing list
http://lists.fossil-scm.org:8080/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fossil-users

Steve Schow

2018-06-13 18:55:50 UTC

As a certified forum junkie…I’ll add my two cents…

While it would be cool to have a forum type of capability built into fossil, I do think that would end up being a very deep rabbit hole and one of the things i love about fossil is the simplicity of it. There are other deep solutions such as redmine and others which provide deep collaboration capabilities…which is where that kind of feature would lead to. Otherwise, in my mind, there is not much purpose of building it into fossil itself. Collaboration such as what we see on GitHub, etc..would be cool, don’t get me wrong, but in my opinion would greatly add to complexity in fossil. I would be using one of those solutions already if I wanted a big complicated collaborative platform like that.

In terms of writing your own mail list software, I don’t know if that makes that much sense either. You might as well just move us to yahoo groups or google groups or something like that and be done with it. email is fundamentally insecure and prone to spamming there is not much way around that.

In terms of converting this list to a forum, an idea I whole heartedly support, there are numerous open source solutions out there for rolling out your own forum, but yes, it does mean having a machine decked out usually with MySQL, but not always…and possibly apache, but not always. There are a few solutions that are commonly in use and basically use the same kind of markdown and most people are pretty comfortable with BBCode, for example, by now. There are a few others. There are some other new frameworks still in early stages, that are more elaborate, but in my mind its mostly eye candy, with LIKE buttons and stuff like that which is kind of overkill as a replacement for mailman. One of the old standby’s that are in use all over the internet are probably the way to go here.

Some advantages of a web based forum are that old threads can live for years and be revisited at any time by anyone, very easily, with searching, etc.. Moderation and membership can be controlled perhaps more easily.

Steve Schow

2018-06-13 19:02:21 UTC

Here are some forum solutions that have been around a long time and a lot of people using them. both work with sqlite:

https://www.phpbb.com <https://www.phpbb.com/>
https://mybb.com <https://mybb.com/>

more info about many more here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Internet_forum_software <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Internet_forum_software>

As a certified forum junkieâŠIâll add my two centsâŠ
While it would be cool to have a forum type of capability built into fossil, I do think that would end up being a very deep rabbit hole and one of the things i love about fossil is the simplicity of it. There are other deep solutions such as redmine and others which provide deep collaboration capabilitiesâŠwhich is where that kind of feature would lead to. Otherwise, in my mind, there is not much purpose of building it into fossil itself. Collaboration such as what we see on GitHub, etc..would be cool, donât get me wrong, but in my opinion would greatly add to complexity in fossil. I would be using one of those solutions already if I wanted a big complicated collaborative platform like that.
In terms of writing your own mail list software, I donât know if that makes that much sense either. You might as well just move us to yahoo groups or google groups or something like that and be done with it. email is fundamentally insecure and prone to spamming there is not much way around that.
In terms of converting this list to a forum, an idea I whole heartedly support, there are numerous open source solutions out there for rolling out your own forum, but yes, it does mean having a machine decked out usually with MySQL, but not alwaysâŠand possibly apache, but not always. There are a few solutions that are commonly in use and basically use the same kind of markdown and most people are pretty comfortable with BBCode, for example, by now. There are a few others. There are some other new frameworks still in early stages, that are more elaborate, but in my mind its mostly eye candy, with LIKE buttons and stuff like that which is kind of overkill as a replacement for mailman. One of the old standbyâs that are in use all over the internet are probably the way to go here.
Some advantages of a web based forum are that old threads can live for years and be revisited at any time by anyone, very easily, with searching, etc.. Moderation and membership can be controlled perhaps more easily.

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Warren Young

2018-06-13 19:12:24 UTC

Post by Steve Schow
There are other deep solutions such as redmine and others which provide deep collaboration capabilities…which is where that kind of feature would lead to.

That makes me like the idea even more. :)

It would be nice, for instance, to be able to reply to a checkin. A coworker/collaborator often checks something in that you want to discuss, so you reply to the checkin, creating a discussion thread from it.

That would also be a step on the path towards a code review feature. In the initial version, simply being able to attach an “Approved” or “Merge it” reply to the latest checkin on an experimental feature branch would be useful.

You can sorta do this today with tech notes, but the message target may miss seeing it, just monitoring the timeline. Adding in email notification solves that, since the email comes from a trusted source, and is thus easy to filter, tag, sort, and escort past the anti-spam filters.

This also allows a platform for CI/CD tools: the tool can “reply” to the checkin with the status of the build, tests, etc. That in turn allows Fossil to display build and test status badges in the default Home wiki article.

Post by Steve Schow
Collaboration such as what we see on GitHub, etc..would be cool, don’t get me wrong, but in my opinion would greatly add to complexity in fossil. I would be using one of those solutions already if I wanted a big complicated collaborative platform like that.

Steve Schow

2018-06-13 20:04:04 UTC

Yea I agree, this is nice stuff to have, but in my view is not compelling for fossil which sets itself apart by being lightweight and simple. There are numerous collaborative development platforms out there already. I’ve messed around with a few of them and they are definitely cool and if I had a larger team working on stuff I’d definitely consider them over fossil for exactly the reasons you lay out. However, I do not feel that Fossil is in the same space as them, it sets itself apart by being lightweight and simple and addresses the core needs of SCM, with a "good enough" ticketing system for a few people to collaborate on”. There are actually many things about the ticketing and SCM in fossil which are bare bones compared to what I am used to in the workplace and have caused me to wish for something more elaborate in terms of peer review workflow, etc…but at the end of the day, the real strength of fossil its is simplicity and lightweight nature..so those kinds of advanced features will probably never get there and that’s fine. I think fossil is great for what it is. What you’re hoping for would be a very large development effort to obtain in fossil, and then it would cease to r itself from the other large offerings that are already out there, as the simple lightweight solution.

Any software project with more than one remote member needs such a thing. For such projects, a discussion forum is probably more important than a wiki or ticket tracker.
I think it’s fair to consider some kind of discussion forum an essential tool for software development collaboration, which puts it right in Fossil’s space.
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Warren Young

2018-06-13 22:17:21 UTC

Post by Steve Schow
Yea I agree, this is nice stuff to have, but in my view is not compelling for fossil which sets itself apart by being lightweight and simple.

Yes, and I would expect this Fossil Forum Feature to be lightweight and simple, in the same way that Fossil doesn’t try to compete feature-for-feature with MediaWiki or Jira. It provides enough wiki and enough ticket tracking for most projects.

2018-06-13 16:30:13 UTC

Post by Richard Hipp
My current tthinking is to use a hybrid approach where subscribers get
emails just like ordinary mailing lists, but posting and replying is
via web-form only.

If you do this atop Fossil, then you end up inches away from being able to provide an oft-wanted feature: email notifications on checkins, wiki article changes, and other Fossil events.

One way to implement that is to incorporate SMTP into Fossil directly.
Recently, I started working on that using my smtp.h and smtp.c:

https://www.somnisoft.com/smtp-client/artifact/f820e6e88d9c3948
https://www.somnisoft.com/smtp-client/artifact/12ee754f88640cb1
https://www.somnisoft.com/smtp-client

Git has a 'git-send-email' command so I add a 'fossil email' command as
a starting point.

https://git-scm.com/docs/git-send-email

I can also add an 'Email Settings' link in the fossil admin settings
menu which would allow the admin to set the mail server settings. I can
provide diff for that later this week, if the fossil devs think this is
heading in the right direction.

Does this sound like a good idea for Fossil?

-James

Ron Aaron

2018-06-13 16:34:40 UTC

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Warren Young

2018-06-13 16:37:10 UTC

I haven’t looked into your implementation, but I suspect you’re missing a whole lot:

http://sqlite.1065341.n5.nabble.com/Many-ML-emails-going-to-GMail-s-SPAM-td98685i20.html#a98722

If Fossil gets an email output path, I’d expect it to be implemented by calling out to an existing MTA, rather than use an internal one, at least to start with. Otherwise, large parts of the email world will be unreachable due to not implementing all of the necessary standards.

bch

2018-06-14 23:48:48 UTC

Post by Richard Hipp
My current tthinking is to use a hybrid approach where subscribers get
emails just like ordinary mailing lists, but posting and replying is
via web-form only.

If you do this atop Fossil, then you end up inches away from being able

to provide an oft-wanted feature: email notifications on checkins, wiki
article changes, and other Fossil events.
One way to implement that is to incorporate SMTP into Fossil directly.

Attractive as that may sound, do we really want to be another (near)
instance of Zawinskiâs Law?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski?wprov=sfti1

Post by Warren Young
https://www.somnisoft.com/smtp-client/artifact/f820e6e88d9c3948
https://www.somnisoft.com/smtp-client/artifact/12ee754f88640cb1
https://www.somnisoft.com/smtp-client
Git has a 'git-send-email' command so I add a 'fossil email' command as
a starting point.
https://git-scm.com/docs/git-send-email
I can also add an 'Email Settings' link in the fossil admin settings
menu which would allow the admin to set the mail server settings. I can
provide diff for that later this week, if the fossil devs think this is
heading in the right direction.
Does this sound like a good idea for Fossil?
-James
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Warren Young

2018-06-15 01:48:06 UTC

Post by JH
One way to implement that is to incorporate SMTP into Fossil directly.

Attractive as that may sound, do we really want to be another (near) instance of Zawinski’s Law?

I always had the sense that that “law” was meant to be read with a reluctant sigh. If Fossil knuckles under to whatever Leviathan is enforcing this particular law, we should reluctantly sigh as well, particularly the unfortunate soul(s) who end up implementing the thing.

Yeah, that’s right, I’m on both sides of this issue. Cope. :)

jungle Boogie

2018-06-13 18:04:25 UTC

Post by Richard Hipp
My current tthinking is to use a hybrid approach where subscribers get
emails just like ordinary mailing lists, but posting and replying is
via web-form only.

If you do this atop Fossil, then you end up inches away from being able to provide an oft-wanted feature: email notifications on checkins, wiki article changes, and other Fossil events.

DRH at least had this concept in mind:
http://www2.alt-mail.net/index.html/doc/trunk/README.md

Shal Farley

2018-06-14 15:43:46 UTC

Post by Richard Hipp
I would like to provide users the option to send messages formatted
using Markdown. Are there Markdown libraries available in TCL that I
can use, that you know of?

Groups.io <https://groups.io/> supports Markdown (web posting only).
Messages composed in markdown are converted to HTML before sending to
the subscribers.

It also supports editing of messages in the archive, with a wiki-like
revision history. And a Wiki on the side.

Shal

Svyatoslav Mishyn

2018-06-13 13:41:15 UTC

Hello,
...

Post by Richard Hipp
(3) GNU MailMan is a pile of Python, spread out across many
directories in magical places all over the filesystem. It is sparsely
documented (that I have been able to find) and difficult to work on.

Have you considered/tried mlmmj - http://mlmmj.org/ ?

At least it's written in C.

--
https://www.juef.space/

Richard Hipp

2018-06-13 13:57:34 UTC

Post by Svyatoslav Mishyn
Have you considered/tried mlmmj - http://mlmmj.org/ ?
At least it's written in C.

A am not familiar with mlmmj. But a quick glance at the README shows
that it seems to be using a pile-of-files style database. In order to
create a new mailing list, you run a script that creates a bunch of
directories under /var/spool/mlmmj/mlmmj-LISTNAME. I'd really like to
move away from pile-of-files databases and hard-coded magic
directories.

--
D. Richard Hipp
***@sqlite.org

Stéphane Aulery

2018-06-13 21:58:50 UTC

...

An other with good maintenance :

https://www.sympa.org/

--
Stéphane Aulery

Joerg Sonnenberger

2018-06-13 13:43:46 UTC

Post by Richard Hipp
(1) Only works with Apache. Or, at least, I have only been able to
get it to work with apache. That means I have to run a separate
apache server just to operation MailMan, whereas the rest of SQLite
and Fossil uses a non-apache solution.

I never used it with Apache. All my past installations where done with
FastCGI.

Post by Richard Hipp
(2) We keep having problems with evil subscribers harvesting the email
addresses of innocent posters and send them porn-spam via private
email. Since the porn-spam contain the subject line of the original
posting, it often makes it through spam filters. MailMan has not
effective solution to this.

This is nothing mailman can do anything about though. The same issue
exist with any other mailing list.

Is it? At least the pkgsrc version is fully contained under lib/mailman.
I don't comment on the source quality.

Post by Richard Hipp
For all of the above reasons, I think the time has come to abandon GNU
MailMan for something better - something that I have more control
over.

From past experience, I would generally recomment against rewriting mail
handling software. It tends to just not be worth the trouble.

That said, which version are you currently using -- the latest? I can
try to spend some time on checking how much work the captcha patch
needs in terms of updating.

Joerg

Florian Weimer

2018-06-13 19:56:07 UTC

Post by Richard Hipp
I have not. On the other hand, that patch has apparently been
available for 4 years and has not yet be folded into the official GNU
MailMan. Is Mailman still supported?

It is, but it's a GNU project, so they are reluctant to download
proprietary Javascript for execution by their users.

What would be an effective solution against *that*? Isn't it caused
by some subscribers having malware on their system?

Andy Bradford

2018-06-13 18:39:14 UTC

The most recent problem is that robots are visiting the subscription
page and entering innocent user's email addresses and names.

What about simply disabling web-based subscriptions and require people
to subscribe via email?

Thanks,

Andy

--
TAI64 timestamp: 400000005b2164f7

Marcelo

2018-06-13 19:02:35 UTC

Post by Andy Bradford

The most recent problem is that robots are visiting the subscription
page and entering innocent user's email addresses and names.

What about simply disabling web-based subscriptions and require people
to subscribe via email?

Codebykevin

2018-06-13 19:11:47 UTC

Does Mailman support old school subscription over email?

Post by Andy Bradford

The most recent problem is that robots are visiting the subscription
page and entering innocent user's email addresses and names.

What about simply disabling web-based subscriptions and require people
to subscribe via email?

â+1. Subscription and responses via email are a plus for me, not a con. There are too many forums online trying to improve what a thread-enabled mail client has been doing well for years, to start thinking in adding another.
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Florian Weimer

2018-06-13 19:57:24 UTC

Post by Codebykevin
Does Mailman support old school subscription over email?

It does. It's possible to run it without any web frontend at all, and
it's still useful. Of course, there's no browsable web archive, but
an external service can handle that.

Stéphane Aulery

2018-06-13 21:46:16 UTC

Post by Florian Weimer

Post by Codebykevin
Does Mailman support old school subscription over email?

It does. It's possible to run it without any web frontend at all, and
it's still useful. Of course, there's no browsable web archive, but
an external service can handle that.
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Yet the LKML (http://vger.kernel.org/) use only Majordomo [1], without
web interface. OpenBSD had a majordomo web interface [2] for management,
but use MARC for archiving.

You can keep mailmain, give information to subscribe by email, and
archive on https://www.mail-archive.com.

A forum is just a mailing list in less good.

But drh could do a trinity of lightweight softwares : SQLite, Fossil and
..., a new and revolutionary mailing list manager and archiver in one
small and efficient binary.

[1] http://vger.kernel.org/
[2] http://old.greatcircle.com/majordomo/
[3] http://www.siliconexus.com/MajorCool/

--
Stéphane Aulery

Richard Hipp

2018-06-13 18:59:59 UTC

Cross-posted to the fossil-users mailing list since www.fossil-scm.org
and www.sqlite.org are the same machine and both mailing lists are
impacted by the current problem.

How about using https://www.discourse.org/ ?
Open source projects can use for free

Thanks for the pointer, Luiz.

Discourse is moving the right direction, I think. To install it, one
downloads a docker container and runs it on some Linux VM someplace.
(They recommend Digital Ocean, which is where I www3.sqlite.org is
hosted already.) It's a self-contained package with minimal
dependencies that just works. And it uses SQLite! My kind of
software!

Here are my remaining points of heartburn with Discourse:

(1) The installation guide recommends using an external email service,
and they even recommend four appropriate services. I clicked through
to each one, having never heard of any of them before. All four are
pushing email marketing for companies sending 10 million or more
emails per month. It seems to me that aggressive email marketing is
the root cause of my problem in the first place, so I am somewhat
reluctant to engage a marketing firm to help with the solution.
Fortunately, Discourse also allows one to use a self-hosting Postfix
installation, which is what we are currently running on sqlite.org.

(2) Discourse seems to want to run on a machine all by itself. (It is
written in Rails and has its own webserver.) I suppose I could spin
up yet another VM to do that. But I learned this craft in an age
where machines were big and expensive and the goal was to cram as many
services as you could fit onto a single machine and IP address, and so
spinning up a separate machine with its own domain name just to manage
the mailing list seems wasteful, somehow. And, that means there is
one more machine that I have to keep track of and manage and defend
from attacks, etc.

(Possible remedy to 2): The main SQLite server (www.sqlite.org)
actually owns 3 IP addresses, only 2 of which are currently in use. I
suppose I could run Discourse on that 3rd unused IP address. But that
will end up being a non-standard setup....

(3) The installation guide says that Discourse takes between 2 and 8
minutes to boot up. Seriously?

Even so, Discourse does seem like considering. Does anybody else have
any experience with Discourse, good or bad?

Are there any volunteers willing to call me on skype and help set this up?

--
D. Richard Hipp
***@sqlite.org

Svyatoslav Mishyn

2018-06-13 19:39:44 UTC

Post by Richard Hipp
Cross-posted to the fossil-users mailing list since www.fossil-scm.org
and www.sqlite.org are the same machine and both mailing lists are
impacted by the current problem.

How about using https://www.discourse.org/ ?
Open source projects can use for free

Another alternative would be nimforum:
https://github.com/nim-lang/nimforum

From its description:
NimForum is a light-weight forum implementation with many similarities
to Discourse. It is implemented in the Nim programming language and uses
SQLite for its database.

Haven't tried to use it myself, just suggesting.

--
https://www.juef.space/

Richard Hipp

2018-06-13 20:21:50 UTC

Post by Svyatoslav Mishyn
https://github.com/nim-lang/nimforum

It does not appear to have email notification. Unless I overlooked something.

--
D. Richard Hipp
***@sqlite.org

Dominique Devienne

2018-06-14 10:29:40 UTC

Discourse is moving the right direction, I think. [...]
Does anybody else have any experience with Discourse, good or bad?

We have an internal instance, and I've had good (but limited) experience
with it.

Editing works well, quoting previous post and inserting responses inline
works well.
There are categories to organise posts into, setup for admins I believe.
Editing is quite similar to StackOverflow, but given Jeff Atwood's
involvement that's hardly surprising.
Some gamification with badges and stuff, like SO again. Email notifications
possible. But AFAIK, no
possibility to reply by email...

Still, I like MLs best... If the only issue is the subscription part, lets
fix that only?

Last discussion/thread on moving away from MLs on the SQLite list showed a
clear bias
against using a forum over a ML IMHO, especially from long time
contributors. My $0.02... --DD

Gour

2018-06-14 10:31:56 UTC

On Thu, 14 Jun 2018 12:29:40 +0200

Post by Dominique Devienne
Still, I like MLs best... If the only issue is the subscription part,
lets fix that only?

Post by Dominique Devienne
Last discussion/thread on moving away from MLs on the SQLite list showed a
clear bias against using a forum over a ML IMHO, especially from long time
contributors. My $0.02... --DD

I fully agree with keeping good old MLs. ;)

Sincerely,
Gour

--
There is no possibility of one's becoming a yogī, O Arjuna,
if one eats too much or eats too little, sleeps too much
or does not sleep enough.

Warren Young

2018-06-14 16:33:02 UTC

Last discussion/thread on moving away from MLs on the SQLite list showed a clear bias
against using a forum over a ML IMHO, especially from long time contributors. My $0.02... —DD

I was one of those arguing in favor of mailing lists.

To me, the question comes down to two key questions:

1. Which gets us back into operation faster? If the effort to maintain a mailing list in today’s inimical environment is greater than the effort to develop an alternate solution that would sidestep these problems, it’s really hard to justify sticking with mailing lists.

2. Does switching add important and valuable new capabilities?

Note the qualifiers. Animoji are not important to the SQLite or Fossil development projects, and their value is very low. Integration with the Fossil DVCS may be very valuable and could become important if it helps win converts.

One new thought since my prior post: many projects (including Fossil and SQLite) have separate user and developer communication channels. It might be that the internal developer discussions use this proposed Fossil Forum feature and the user discussions are held elsewhere.

In one of my Fossil-based projects, we have a public Google Group for discussions that may not even touch on the software development project, with developer discussions hidden away in private email, even though there’s nothing particularly personal about the discussions.

I mentioned Fossil artifact links in a prior email. I’m frequently hand-crafting these in emails to other developers on the project to refer to some checkin, wiki edit, etc. It’s annoying.

Roy Keene

2018-06-14 16:47:40 UTC

If it's any conideration, if it's not a mailing list or something else
pushed to me, I'll never see it. A fossil users' forum will never get
checked (pulled) by me since I am just too lazy to remember to do so on
any regular frequency. There may be others like me who are busy but can
occasionally check email.

Last discussion/thread on moving away from MLs on the SQLite list showed a clear bias
against using a forum over a ML IMHO, especially from long time contributors. My $0.02... âDD

I was one of those arguing in favor of mailing lists.
1. Which gets us back into operation faster? If the effort to maintain a mailing list in todayâs inimical environment is greater than the effort to develop an alternate solution that would sidestep these problems, itâs really hard to justify sticking with mailing lists.
2. Does switching add important and valuable new capabilities?
Note the qualifiers. Animoji are not important to the SQLite or Fossil development projects, and their value is very low. Integration with the Fossil DVCS may be very valuable and could become important if it helps win converts.
One new thought since my prior post: many projects (including Fossil and SQLite) have separate user and developer communication channels. It might be that the internal developer discussions use this proposed Fossil Forum feature and the user discussions are held elsewhere.
In one of my Fossil-based projects, we have a public Google Group for discussions that may not even touch on the software development project, with developer discussions hidden away in private email, even though thereâs nothing particularly personal about the discussions.
I mentioned Fossil artifact links in a prior email. Iâm frequently hand-crafting these in emails to other developers on the project to refer to some checkin, wiki edit, etc. Itâs annoying.
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Richard Hipp

2018-06-14 16:51:09 UTC

Post by Roy Keene
If it's any conideration, if it's not a mailing list or something else
pushed to me, I'll never see it.

I agree. Any solution must support email notification. Am working on
that now. But, given all the security constraints surrounding email
these days, it is a tough problem.

--
D. Richard Hipp
***@sqlite.org

Roy Keene

2018-06-14 16:54:47 UTC

As someone who rarely posts messages and mostly reads the posts, I
wouldn't be affected by requiring posts be done via an authenticated
web-based system. RSS may even be an option over email for consuming and
it can have links for authenticated posting. I haven't read all the
emails on this thread so sorry if this is already been hashed out.

Post by Roy Keene
If it's any conideration, if it's not a mailing list or something else
pushed to me, I'll never see it.

I agree. Any solution must support email notification. Am working on
that now. But, given all the security constraints surrounding email
these days, it is a tough problem.
--
D. Richard Hipp
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Warren Young

2018-06-14 17:13:10 UTC

Post by Roy Keene
If it's any conideration, if it's not a mailing list or something else
pushed to me, I'll never see it.

I agree. Any solution must support email notification. Am working on
that now. But, given all the security constraints surrounding email
these days, it is a tough problem.

I’ve just thought of a reason that you cannot simply send outbound email to a local MTA and have it deliver it for you, while conforming to all of the relevant RFCs: when the mailing list members receive the message, some may want to reply, and that would then go back to the same MTA which would then be unable to process the mail correctly.

An MTA plugin and/or hand-configuration to integrate Fossil Forums with the MTA could solve it, but now you’re adding complexity. I suspect many haven’t put their public Fossil instances behind an HTTPS proxy for the same reason, and we should take that as a caution.

There are definite advantages to Fossil Forums being its own MTA.

Thomas

2018-06-14 19:36:19 UTC

Post by Roy Keene
If it's any conideration, if it's not a mailing list or something else
pushed to me, I'll never see it. A fossil users' forum will never get
checked (pulled) by me since I am just too lazy to remember to do so on
any regular frequency. There may be others like me who are busy but can
occasionally check email.

Mailing lists in general are disappearing and forums are coming in more
and more. There surely are loads of reasons but I'd like to only point
out that once the amount of posts increases no one wants to see all
those in their inbox.

John Long

2018-06-14 19:51:19 UTC

Agreed 100%. This is the lowest noise option.

Post by Thomas
Mailing lists in general are disappearing and forums are coming in more
and more.

Yes, the world is going to hell in our lifetime. Dare I suggest we bin
all the mailing list ideas and go back to Usenet?

Post by Thomas
There surely are loads of reasons but I'd like to only point
out that once the amount of posts increases no one wants to see all
those in their inbox.

It's a huge pain in the ass to have to sign up for anything just to ask
a question or report a bug. Huge.

But as offensive and unmanageable as that is, having to have browser
tabs open for dozens of web forums, having to come up with and manage
passwords for each of those, and have to actively monitor each one to
see if anything of interest happens to appear, is much worse.

A decent email client can run on a terminal, over ssh or telnet, etc.
and can handle all sorts of filtering and searching. Most mailing lists
assign you a password and you don't even have to keep track of it; many
email you password reminders on a regular basis and you don't even
need it until you want to unsubscribe.

Web forums are right out.

/jl

Thomas

2018-06-14 20:01:33 UTC

Post by John Long
A decent email client can run on a terminal, over ssh or telnet, etc.
and can handle all sorts of filtering and searching. Most mailing lists

Roy Keene

2018-06-14 21:20:22 UTC

Loading Image...

.htm

:-)

And yes, this is my primary MUA -- not something I setup to reply to this
email.

Post by John Long
A decent email client can run on a terminal, over ssh or telnet, etc.
and can handle all sorts of filtering and searching. Most mailing lists

I just checked the calendar. It's the 21st century here. Not sure how many
terminals, telnets or SSH sessions average users got open but I reckon that a
good guess of less than a promille might be more precise than you may
imagine...
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Warren Young

2018-06-14 20:47:44 UTC

having to have browser tabs open for dozens of web forums

I bookmark all of the sites I need to go to regularly and place them in a folder in my browser’s bookmark bar so that I can open them all at once with a Cmd- or Ctrl-Click on the folder. As I read each forum, I close that tab.

I actually keep two such folders, “Daily” and “Weekly,” suggesting my visiting frequency, which is set by how often I expect interesting content to appear.

having to come up with and manage
passwords for each of those

I’m not aware of any mailing list that doesn’t require a password, if only via some outer SSO provider. Such a thing would be a spammer’s paradise, if it existed.

I don’t see this web forum depending on someone else’s SSO solution. (OAuth, OpenID, etc.) That would be very un-Fossil.

and have to actively monitor each one to
see if anything of interest happens to appear

Yes, just like Usenet. :)

Opening a folder of bookmarks in a browser isn’t much different than opening a Usenet client that’s subscribed to an equivalent number of groups. Both aggregate access to many fora, opened with a single user action.

Most mailing lists assign you a password

I subscribe to a whole lot of mailing lists, and I can’t come up with one where I was given the password instead of having to generate it with my password manager.

“A small minority,” I believe, but not “most.”

Certainly not GNU Mailman as configured at fossil-scm.org or at sqlite.org, at any rate.

and you don't even have to keep track of it; many
email you password reminders on a regular basis

If the mailing list is able to email you your password, it’s ripe for attack: they cannot possibly be hashing and salting their passwords, as is industry best practice:

https://security.stackexchange.com/q/51959

(Pro tip: if a web site has a maximum password length limit under 32 characters or so, chances are good that they’re storing your password in plaintext, since hashing the password inherently converts it to a fixed length. Higher limits are more likely input sanity limits rather than risk indicators.)

The closest to your usability ideal that I’ve seen is automatic password resets via email, which is itself a vulnerability, since it means anyone who can access your email account is able to take over any such service associated with that email account. This is what happened in the famous Mat Honan identity theft:

https://www.wired.com/2012/08/apple-amazon-mat-honan-hacking/

People say, “Oh, it’s just my Google account, who cares if a bad guy takes that over?” This being the account that is associated with their Android phone, which is associated with their mobile phone company account, which is associated with their credit card account, which is associated with a large chunk of their financial life, so now they’re pwned.

Whatever drh decides to build, using a significant slice of his limited time on this planet, which time I have no call on, I expect he will take password security seriously, evidenced by Fossil’s users table:

https://www.fossil-scm.org/xfer/doc/trunk/www/tech_overview.wiki

(Section 2.2.4.)

Web forums are right out.

Would you rather see drh spending time fighting spam or writing useful software?

At least if he spends his time building a forum system atop Fossil, we can all use it on our own projects as well. His time spent fighting email spam has much more ephemeral benefits.

Shal Farley

2018-06-15 03:05:41 UTC

Iâm not aware of any mailing list that doesnât require a password, if only via some outer SSO provider. Such a thing would be a spammerâs paradise, if it existed.

In Groups.io <https://groups.io/> creating and using a password is
optional, because some users expect logging into a web site to work that
way. The other method is having the site email you a login link whenever
you need a new session.

The closest to your usability ideal that Iâve seen is automatic password resets via email, which is itself a vulnerability, since it means anyone who can access your email account is able to take over any such service associated with that email account.

That is a valid criticism of Groups.io's technique. On the other hand,
it is a mailing list service - in some regards an extension of your
email service. Just don't post your most guarded secrets to the list.

Would you rather see drh spending time fighting spam or writing useful software?

I think that's the best reason for outsourcing the mailing list problem,
and the reason I spoke up here in the first place. That and the deep
development effort required and ongoing maintenance to keep up with the
changing deliverability landscape as mailbox providers evolve their
anti-abuse defenses.

As I said in my first, I don't think that choice precludes work on
building something integrated with fossil that may be interesting and
useful for drh and for us. Someone else here suggested already that what
works best as a component of fossil in support of a development team
might not be the same solution as what works best for an open community
of users and developers asking and answering questions.

Yes, I'm a mailing-list advocate, and hence a dinosaur. Which, on /this/
list in particular, is about the most hilarious insult I've seen in
quite some time.

Shal

Warren Young

2018-06-15 03:34:48 UTC

Post by Shal Farley

Post by Warren Young
Would you rather see drh spending time fighting spam or writing useful software?

I think that's the best reason for outsourcing the mailing list problem

Agreed, which is why I’ve also been on the “keep the mailing list” side of the argument: the difficulty in implementing SMTP and its raft of concomitant standards.

There are pros and cons on both sides, and the community has listed several of each.

drh has his poll results now, so I think it’s now time to start winding these threads down and wait to see how he chooses to spend his time.

Post by Shal Farley
I don't think that choice precludes work on building something integrated with fossil that may be interesting and useful for drh and for us.

Also agreed. In that case, then maybe full SMTP support in Fossil wouldn’t be justified, and it would require integration with a local MTA instead, to push the burden off to the other component. That wouldn’t be very Fossil, but it would be pragmatic.

Post by Shal Farley
Someone else here suggested already that what works best as a component of fossil in support of a development team might not be the same solution as what works best for an open community of users and developers asking and answering questions.

That was me. Developer list != user list. Different technologies for each within a single project are sometimes justified.

Post by Shal Farley
Yes, I'm a mailing-list advocate, and hence a dinosaur.

It’s one thing to label yourself such, and quite another for others to throw that label at you as an accusation. Ahem. :)

(Speaking as one who’s been using the Internet since shortly after bang paths went out of style.)

Warren Young

2018-06-15 03:41:19 UTC

Post by Warren Young
maybe full SMTP support in Fossil wouldn’t be justified, and it would require integration with a local MTA instead, to push the burden off to the other component. That wouldn’t be very Fossil, but it would be pragmatic.

On second thought, that’s not true. Fossil currently does not try to implement the client or server sides of TLS. It delegates to OpenSSL for the former and to an HTTPS proxy for the latter.

This may be another area where Fossil is right to delegate.

Olivier Mascia

2018-06-17 07:22:23 UTC

having to have browser tabs open for dozens of web forums

I bookmark all of the sites I need to go to regularly and place them in a folder in my browser’s bookmark bar so that I can open them all at once with a Cmd- or Ctrl-Click on the folder. As I read each forum, I close that tab.
I actually keep two such folders, “Daily” and “Weekly,” suggesting my visiting frequency, which is set by how often I expect interesting content to appear.

I have a similar routine, but does so all within my email application, which I find much more effective for the task. I'm happy you found what works for you. It just doesn't match my preferences, but that is OK and increases cultural richness.

--
Best Regards, Meilleures salutations, Met vriendelijke groeten,
Olivier Mascia

Warren Young

2018-06-14 19:59:44 UTC

no one wants to see all those in their inbox.

Mailing list messages are easily filtered.

I have one mailbox for each mailing list I subscribe to, and I read through the messages in list order, which makes it easy to mentally switch gears from one project to the next.

If one project gets out of hand for a while, I can mark only that one mailbox as “read” without declaring email bankruptcy on all my other email.

s***@gmail.com

2018-06-14 20:02:23 UTC

Ha! I can see there are strong opposing opinions for mail vs forum.
I find forums more neatly packaged.
Mailing lists are not easily browsed or searched for relevant terms.
Some run on mail topics are a pain to find the nugget of information
desired.
Forum responses can have votes or kudos assigned which hasten searches.
Still, you will suffer spammers in the forum as bots have figured the user
request pages.
With Fossil's unversioned content, the forum or mail bloat can be minimized.

no one wants to see all those in their inbox.

Mailing list messages are easily filtered.
I have one mailbox for each mailing list I subscribe to, and I read
through the messages in list order, which makes it easy to mentally switch
gears from one project to the next.
If one project gets out of hand for a while, I can mark only that one
mailbox as âreadâ without declaring email bankruptcy on all my other email.
_______________________________________________
fossil-users mailing list
http://lists.fossil-scm.org:8080/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fossil-users

Thomas

2018-06-14 20:30:01 UTC

Web forums are much more superior than mailing lists, in any possible
direction.

There's nothing a mailing list can provide a forum can't, since it
doesn't exclude email notifications.

However, there's loads of benefits a forum provides a mailing list can't
catch up with.

That's the reason why mailing lists are disappearing.

Post by s***@gmail.com
Ha! I can see there are strong opposing opinions for mail vs forum.
I find forums more neatly packaged.
Mailing lists are not easily browsed or searched for relevant terms.
Some run on mail topics are a pain to find the nugget of information
desired.
Forum responses can have votes or kudos assigned which hasten searches.
Still, you will suffer spammers in the forum as bots have figured the user
request pages.
With Fossil's unversioned content, the forum or mail bloat can be minimized.

no one wants to see all those in their inbox.

Mailing list messages are easily filtered.
I have one mailbox for each mailing list I subscribe to, and I read
through the messages in list order, which makes it easy to mentally switch
gears from one project to the next.
If one project gets out of hand for a while, I can mark only that one
mailbox as “read” without declaring email bankruptcy on all my other email.
_______________________________________________
fossil-users mailing list
http://lists.fossil-scm.org:8080/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fossil-users

_______________________________________________
fossil-users mailing list
http://lists.fossil-scm.org:8080/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fossil-users

jungle Boogie

2018-06-14 20:40:35 UTC

Post by Thomas
Web forums are much more superior than mailing lists, in any possible
direction.

Ah, yes, superior.
https://xkcd.com/979/

At this rate, I suggest we start using reddit more, it's at least more
diverse than a single stand alone forum.
https://www.reddit.com/r/sqlite/

Thomas

2018-06-14 20:52:05 UTC

Post by jungle Boogie

Post by Thomas
Web forums are much more superior than mailing lists, in any possible
direction.

Ah, yes, superior.
https://xkcd.com/979/
At this rate, I suggest we start using reddit more, it's at least more
diverse than a single stand alone forum.
https://www.reddit.com/r/sqlite/

Dinosaurs died out around 60 000 000 years before humans evolved.
No one can escape progress, no matter how hard some are clinging on the
past.

Olivier Mascia

2018-06-17 07:13:39 UTC

Web forums are much more superior than mailing lists, in any possible direction.
There's nothing a mailing list can provide a forum can't, since it doesn't exclude email notifications.
However, there's loads of benefits a forum provides a mailing list can't catch up with.
That's the reason why mailing lists are disappearing.

I respectfully don't agree.

Web forums truly have the advantage of being an archive of previous conversations, making it easy for new subscribers to browse or search and partially read previous content at first. There are a number of third-parties aggregators that do the same for mailing-lists, but indeed such an archive run by the mailing-list owners themselves is probably superior if it can at the same time be used by web forums lovers to read and participate in the conversation group.

There is nothing right in trying to persuade people that one's idea is everybody's wish and best for them all. People of a certain age know that History, as well as on a much less tragic way, computer industry, has too many examples.

--
Best Regards, Meilleures salutations, Met vriendelijke groeten,
Olivier Mascia

Thomas

2018-06-14 20:23:14 UTC

no one wants to see all those in their inbox.

Most people only have one mailbox. I presume you're referring to folders.

Post by Warren Young
If one project gets out of hand for a while, I can mark only that one mailbox as “read” without declaring email bankruptcy on all my other email.

Forum software offers the very same functionality but that's not the
direct purpose of it. In a mailing list you're either "in" or "out". A
forum provides all possible options.

Joerg Sonnenberger

2018-06-14 20:47:57 UTC

no one wants to see all those in their inbox.

Most people only have one mailbox. I presume you're referring to folders.

OK, I guess that makes it pretty clear that your knowledge of mail
handling is limited. That's unsurprising, given that the majority of
fori proponents never really managed basic things like mail filtering...

Post by Warren Young
If one project gets out of hand for a while, I can mark only that one mailbox as “read” without declaring email bankruptcy on all my other email.

Forum software offers the very same functionality but that's not the direct
purpose of it. In a mailing list you're either "in" or "out". A forum
provides all possible options.

I've had to deal with my share of fori. Frankly, they all suck for power
users, often badly. While mailing lists do tend to be a bit more
annoying than newsgroups, they nevertheless share the majority of
advantages. Offline access, decent filtering etc. Heck, a lot of fori
programs still hasn't even managed good threading.

You can't search a mailing list? Stop using Outlook.

Joerg

Thomas

2018-06-14 21:10:35 UTC

Post by Joerg Sonnenberger
I've had to deal with my share of fori. Frankly, they all suck for power
users, often badly. While mailing lists do tend to be a bit more
annoying than newsgroups, they nevertheless share the majority of
advantages. Offline access, decent filtering etc. Heck, a lot of fori
programs still hasn't even managed good threading.

Another example of the past. We're online 24/7 nowadays. Offline access
is not required anymore.

In case you really need some help while offline, I cannot imagine how
you'd be able to get a request for help out better via mail than
dropping off a forum post when you're offline. - Ouch! :-(

Warren Young

2018-06-14 21:21:53 UTC

Another example of the past. We're online 24/7 nowadays. Offline access is not required anymore.

I was offline for about 3 days solid, less than a week ago. No Internet access at all, despite having a charged mobile phone with me at the time.

I have made Fossil repo commits from inside an RV, miles from the nearest wifi.

I expect to have no Internet access in the plane I will be aboard shortly.

In case you really need some help while offline, I cannot imagine how you'd be able to get a request for help out better via mail than dropping off a forum post when you're offline.

What of the other direction? People like Jörg are more likely to be answering questions than asking them. Why not write answers while offline, then sync the answers when back on-network? Email lists, Usenet, and my proposed Fossil Forum Feature allow this. Web forums generally do not.

Thomas

2018-06-14 21:31:33 UTC

Post by Warren Young
What of the other direction? People like Jörg are more likely to be answering questions than asking them. Why not write answers while offline, then sync the answers when back on-network? Email lists, Usenet, and my proposed Fossil Forum Feature allow this. Web forums generally do not.

Yeah, I've seen this before.

- 1) Can you help me please?
- 1) Ah, sorry, solved it myself.
- 2) Reply: you should do xy...

:-)

When you're offline, you really shouldn't touch any conversation.

Thomas

2018-06-14 21:36:05 UTC

Post by Warren Young
I expect to have no Internet access in the plane I will be aboard shortly.

I'm not aware of any airline that doesn't provide internet access on
long-haul flights. Is there still one left?

Roy Keene

2018-06-14 21:38:22 UTC

Yes. Quite a lot.

Post by Warren Young
I expect to have no Internet access in the plane I will be aboard shortly.

I'm not aware of any airline that doesn't provide internet access on
long-haul flights. Is there still one left?
_______________________________________________
fossil-users mailing list
http://lists.fossil-scm.org:8080/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fossil-users

Thomas

2018-06-14 21:47:34 UTC

In that case I'm sorry that your email replies to a mailing list will be
outdated by the time you'll reach civilisation again.

Better don't reply then.

Yes. Quite a lot.

Post by Warren Young
I expect to have no Internet access in the plane I will be aboard shortly.

_______________________________________________
fossil-users mailing list
http://lists.fossil-scm.org:8080/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fossil-users

Warren Young

2018-06-14 22:19:54 UTC

Post by Warren Young
I expect to have no Internet access in the plane I will be aboard shortly.

I'm not aware of any airline that doesn't provide internet access on long-haul flights. Is there still one left?

I just checked, and for the flight I’ll be on, it’ll cost me about 1/10 the monthly cost of my residential Internet service, per device. If I want to use my phone, tablet, and laptop, that’s 3/10 my monthly cost for a few hours of terrible service.

…which you apparently think I should pay just so the software I use doesn’t have to deal with the offline access case.

You’re very generous with the contents of my wallet.

While on last week’s off-network trip, I tallied the number of apps on my tablet that were useless without an Internet connection. It was about 75% before I gave up in disgust.

I decided to do that tally after being unable to move a document from one app to the another on the same tablet, because the receiving app only offered a “send it to a datacenter in Washington state” import option.

This is not progress.

Thomas

2018-06-14 23:07:59 UTC

Post by Warren Young
I just checked, and for the flight I’ll be on, it’ll cost me about 1/10 the monthly cost of my residential Internet service, per device. If I want to use my phone, tablet, and laptop, that’s 3/10 my monthly cost for a few hours of terrible service.

That means again that it's probably better not to answer any support
requests from this mailing list, which you will have downloaded eons ago
already nonetheless (since you got no internet access). Your replies
might be terribly outdated once you roll in to the nearest free wifi.

I actually find it quite amusing that some people seem to be so
personally involved in their favour of a mailing list over a forum,
while this discussion has ceased for pretty much any other software
product already, and many people even getting very personal, including
insults.

Offray Vladimir Luna Cárdenas

2018-06-14 23:55:45 UTC

Post by Warren Young
I just checked, and for the flight I’ll be on, it’ll cost me about
1/10 the monthly cost of my residential Internet service, per
device. If I want to use my phone, tablet, and laptop, that’s 3/10
my monthly cost for a few hours of terrible service.

That means again that it's probably better not to answer any support
requests from this mailing list, which you will have downloaded eons
ago already nonetheless (since you got no internet access). Your
replies might be terribly outdated once you roll in to the nearest
free wifi.
I actually find it quite amusing that some people seem to be so
personally involved in their favour of a mailing list over a forum,
while this discussion has ceased for pretty much any other software
product already, and many people even getting very personal, including
insults.

For me what is amusing is that people thinks that their reality defines
the reality of everyone else. In several countries in Latin America,
Asia and Africa (yes they're still a different part of the world in the
XXI century, despite of the efforts of "colonizers" to deny their
individuality since eons) there is not online all time and answering an
email from 3 days ago is not like being disconnected from centuries,
because three days still felt like 3 days and not like centuries in
those places.

Anything that allows offline participation is really appreciated over
the so called "Global South". I have been using Discourse Forum, with
mail suscription and mailing lists and I can see the advantages of the
first for a more peripheral participation and mailing list in
communities where I want to be more involved.

Just my 2 pesos, from another perspective in another place of the world.

Cheers,

Offray

Cheers,

Offray

Olivier Mascia

2018-06-17 06:52:34 UTC

Post by Warren Young
Mailing list messages are easily filtered.
I have one mailbox for each mailing list I subscribe to, and I read through the messages in list order, which makes it easy to mentally switch gears from one project to the next.

Most people only have one mailbox. I presume you're referring to folders.

Post by Warren Young
If one project gets out of hand for a while, I can mark only that one mailbox as “read” without declaring email bankruptcy on all my other email.

Forum software offers the very same functionality but that's not the direct purpose of it. In a mailing list you're either "in" or "out". A forum provides all possible options.

I routinely follow and participate in about 18 mailing-lists. They're all conveniently aggregated in folders, which is done automatically by rules applied by my IMAP mail server upon arrival. That's comfortable and I have all of it through a single user interface: my email reader. I can easily full-text search on a folder, some or all of them. With a decent email reader and a mailbox managed by a decent, standard compliant, IMAP server, these actions are effective (server-side filtering for instance). I can also set expiration rules to automatically purge older messages, depending on the folder.

I can't even imagine myself finding the time and will to visit about 12 to 15 different URLs, user interfaces, to browse and read what might interest me. And then face as much different interfaces to reply conveniently.

The right solution to please every wishes is to have a perfectly integrated dual-interface system where the mailing-list and the webforum is *one*. Displaying, encouraging proper threading on the webforum, respectfully matching the email threading. And reciprocal. Such that it wouldn't make any difference if I post per email, reply/quote per email or through the webforum. I'd be free to ignore the existence of the webforum as much as you could ignore it is a mailing list at the same time. Each subscriber electing to have the content delivery additionally per email, or not.

Any webforum solution with an email notification mechanism in the style "hey someone just posted a reply" or "there have been 122 posts since your last visit" is useless to me. This is worse than not getting email at all: it pollutes the mailbox with contentless and countless reminders, yet doesn't solve the time-consuming issue to having to pull information from one webforum at a time, using all their different user interfaces.

--
Best Regards, Meilleures salutations, Met vriendelijke groeten,
Olivier Mascia

Richard Hipp

2018-06-14 16:48:25 UTC

Post by Warren Young
It might
be that the internal developer discussions use this proposed Fossil Forum
feature and the user discussions are held elsewhere.

My plan was to set up an entirely new Fossil repo just to host the
Forum for SQLite - a repo that was separate from the SQLite source
code repo and holds only the forum. Call it https://sqlite.org/forum

On the Fossil website, on the other hand, the entire website is just a
single Fossil instance. And so on that case it does seem to make more
sense to put the forum in the same repo as the source code.

A key point here is you get to choose. Easily. Fossil is (or at
least should be) so simple to set up that people can and do decide to
use Fossil to host just a forum, or just a wiki, or just a ticketing
system, without being required to use all the rest of the
capabilities.

--
D. Richard Hipp
***@sqlite.org

Shal Farley

2018-06-14 06:45:59 UTC