Hello everyone,
*TL;DR*: Freedesktop mailing infra is buggy, has lot of quirks
wrt. email deliverability. Freedesktop infra team cannot help.
Migration to TDF infra is fixing the issue.
Discussion happens on the website mailing list.
# Situation
- The FreeDesktop infra has deliverability issues, I noticed the issue back in the day, when I switched my personal email address to my @libreoffice.org for all LibreOffice related activities. We spent much time to debug the issue. Guilhem tried to help me, but without much results as he hasn't access to the FreeDesktop infra. FreeDesktop infra team which I contacted aren't able to help either.
- At the last French community meeting in France, I did a comparison of the number of emails people registered to dev and qa are receiving. Much of us hadn't the same amount which means the service is unreliable.
- This is a deliverability issue, not related to moderation
area.
- Some issues fixed thanks to help of Kendy at FOSDEM by
explicitly whitelisting my account on the FreeDesktop Mailman
instance.
- The mailman instance suffers from database inconsistencies. While my account using my personal email address had been removed, the new @libreoffice.org email is leading to error 500 when I try to connect. Need to use the credential from the removed account to make it work. This proves the database has inconsistencies from their end.
- New comers are often asking the question why the DEV and QA
mailing are on the FreeDesktop infra and not on TDF one. We
always have to answer that's for legacy reasons, etc. We need
more consistency for new comers. related to rdm#3118
- New generation of developers hate mailing lists and prefer
forums (cf. related project Disource <-> mailman bridge).
Having to subscribe to a mailing list which doesn't work
reliability is even more annoying and an even greater barrier
blocker. related to rdm#2952
- Situation deadlocked for more than a year. Being the referent of some people wanting to contribute via the French community (due to me being the previous CM of the LibreOfficeFR Twitter account), I'm still receiving requests like this one on my personal email address. Promised to report the issue and do my best to provide a fix once and for all.
# Solution
- TDF admin team is willing to help. Only possible if they are
able to debug and thus managing the mail instance is the key
here, which means migration to TDF infra.
- Current and future deliverability issues will likely we solved
as well into the process since we have a sysadmin team that
rocks and answer quickly to issues.
- Nothing changes for current Dev and QA mailing admin POV. They
still can be the maintainers/admins of these lists. Those who
may complain that TDF could get in the way will thus have their
expectations met.
- Attachments are available on TDF infra. The admins of the mailing list simply choose whether to authorize them or not.
- Reply-to mangling is not an issue, the admins of the mailing list are choosing which best fits them. TDF is using mlmmj-compatible options which are:
- Don't touch Reply-To: headers: preserve the one found in the sender's message when present, don't add/replace the header.
- Strip existing Reply-To: headers.
- Add/replace a Reply-To: headers.
# Next steps
- See a timeframe with the TDF infra. Will be present at the
next infra team
- Provide a warning on the Dev and QA mailing lists at least 1
month in advance with reminders each week.
- If nobody complains after some period, enforce the migration
- Timeframe of end of July would be great.
Your thoughts here? (answers on website@ please)
Regards,
-- William Gathoye Hyper<hack>tive volunteer for LibreOffice Proud member of The Document Foundation Member of LaMouette - French based association promoting ODF and LibreOffice
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