Re: IM2000 Won't Be Worth It

Ian Lance Taylor <[email protected]> wrote:
> I think the main argument is eliminating bounce messages and
> simplifying mailing lists.

The no-subscription model of mailing lists is certainly interesting.
But what does it achieve that cannot be achieved via NNTP today?
Also, how do "subscribers" know when there is new mail to be fetched?
Currently, if I am on a mailing list I know about new messages
essentially immediately. It's not very efficient to have every
"subscriber" contacting the message store every 5 seconds to see if
there is new mail!

> Bounce messages are bad because they are widely mishandled today, and
> there is no realistic prospect for improvement.  Today there is no
> good way to know whether somebody received an e-mail message, short of
> telephoning them.  IM2000 raises the possibility of solving that
> problem (you still won't know whether the message was read, but you
> will know that it was received).

What does it achieve that Return-Receipt-To does not already achieve,
or that could not be achieved by a simple protocol to allow MUAs to
inspect their SMTP smarthost's outgoing mail queue? Is it actually
useful to know that a message has been received but not necessarily
read?

> Large mailing lists are bad because they have a lot of churn in
> recipients, and thanks to the problems with bounce messages you wind
> up sending many messages to recipients who no longer exist.

What does IM2000 achieve here that VERP together with good mailing
list management software does not already achieve? What does it
achieve that minor improvements to MUAs and mailing list managers
could not achieve?

> I'm one of the group who manages sources.redhat.com, which hosts the
> gcc and cygwin development mailing lists, and IM2000 would eliminate
> a number of the things we have to deal with regularly.

Can you give examples of the sorts of things you have to deal with
regularly? I administrate a few (small) mailing lists and the main
problem I have to deal with is spam. I use postfix and mailman
personally, I see you use qmail and ezmlm.

> I personally don't think IM2000 will help with the spam problem.  I
> find the various arguments on that front to be unconvincing--spammers
> have already demonstrated that they are highly adaptable, and I'm sure
> they would adapt to IM2000 as well.

Indeed.

Thanks for your comments.

Cheers


Jon