Re: What happened to mailman

On Thu, Oct 16, 2003 at 11:59:02PM -0500, D Canfield wrote:
> Why won't anyone from RedHat answer the simple question as to why
> mailman won't be included in 3.0?  It seems like a simple one-sentence
> answer would suffice.

I'm not from Red Hat but I'll address the question anyway since I'm in
the same situation as you are - migrating from RHL to RHEL.
 
> I'm looking at moving all of our servers up to the enterprise edition,
> and mailman is a package that stands out as conspicuously missing for
> the mail server.  So, I check the release notes expecting to find a
> per-package listing of what's been added/removed in this release like
> the RHL/Fedora releases always have... no 
> such luck.  

I would expect that in the final release notes.  If it's not there, we
need to beat Red Hat up.
 
> The answer to why RedHat makes the choices they do in the enterprise
> product is very important to me as a customer.  If the answer is
> "because we don't have time and the customers don't care" then I know
> it's probably safe to look at re-building the fedora package on a 3.0
> box.  If the answer is "the permissions are messy and cause people
> trouble", I know I'll have my work cut out for me.  If the answer is "it
> arbitrarily eats up all the CPU and chokes the server", I know to stay
> away.

Mailman is suprisingly easy to install from source if you have some
basic understanding of what accounts apache and your MTA run under.
However, because both of those can change - especially since multiple
MTAs are supported - automatic packaging is difficult.  When RHL 9 first
came out, Red Hat got it wrong and there was a LOT of grumbling on the
mailman list from people trying to get it going and having serious
issues.

I grabbed the tarball and installed it directly on taroon beta 2.  I did
have a bit of work initially since my system started with postfix and
then migrated to sendmail and I was struggling with thinking about the
older sendmail (8.11) and how it handled permissions.  Eventually I
removed all references to both sendmail and postfix, re-installed
sendmail, and it's been fine ever since.  

> I have similar questions about a variety of packages in the
> distribution... why OpenLDAP 2.0 instead of 2.1 (another question from
> the list that was ignored), why IMAP-2002 instead of the dovecot used in
> Fedora, etc.  

Usually, the case is that the newest release didn't have time to
stabilize between the time it came out and when Red Hat has to make a
decision as to what to include.  The goal that Red Hat CAN NOT deviate
from is long-term stability.  imap2002 works.  I've never used or seen
dovecot, but if it's in Fedora, than I would expect that it's going
through a public evaluation phase and it may make it into RHEL 4.

I asked the same question about OpenOffice 1.1.  It won't be in RHEL 3
nor RHPW (whatever version they call it).  I don't like the answer, but
I understand why the decision was made.  Red Hat certainly can't put in
a lot of late-breaking versions into their enterprise product - that
would be suicidal.  They can't afford "brown paper bag" releases like
you can get away with in a consumer product.

> These are the types of questions that I don't want to have
> to call and nag RedHat about individually via the support contract, but
> are important to me.  

You are paying for a support contract.  If the issue is important, log a
support call and raise those issues.  The more customers that do, the
more visibility it has in Red Hat.  Red Hat is releasing a product that
they think their customers want at the price point that is reasonable
for both parties.  Not even Red Hat will be right 100% of the time - if
there are issues that are affecting you, let them know.

> Any insights from the RedHat folk? Is there a "paying customers list"
> that I'm missing?  Are such questions to be answered somewhere else at
> another time?

There isn't a list specifically for enterprise customers.  I'll see what
I can do about getting one created.

-- 
Ed Wilts, Mounds View, MN, USA
mailto:[email protected]
Member #1, Red Hat Community Ambassador Program


--
Taroon-beta-list mailing list
[email protected]
http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/taroon-beta-list