"List Server" to Layman and Computer Expert

Piper pay_the_piper at shaw.ca
Sun Jul 26 15:54:34 UTC 2009


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Preston Hagar" <prestonh at gmail.com>
To: "Ubuntu user technical support, not for general discussions"
<ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com>
Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 2009 11:11 AM
Subject: Re: Upgrading Evolution/Express/Mac-equivalent


> On Wed, Jul 22, 2009 at 12:28 PM, Piper<pay_the_piper at shaw.ca> wrote:
>> Why wouldn't Evolution or Express be improved or upgraded? And what does
>> the
>> Mac OS call its emailer?
>>
>> So these are three email servers allowed by Shaw and other ISPs.
>>
>> If they are improved Shaw won't allow them? Is that political?
>
>
> Evolution and Outlook Express are _not_ email servers.  They are MUAs
> or "Mail Clients".  This diagram may help:
>
> http://support.kavi.com/khelp/kmlm/user_help/html/how_email_works.html

Thanks for the diagram.

What we seem to have here is a communication/definitional problem. If I go 
to my garage with a problem, I express it in layman's terms. I may not use 
words like motor and engine the same way as people in auto engineering and I 
may describe a motor/engine sound like "knocking" which the engineer 
recognizes in different terms.

To me, 50 people on the ABC list in Express or Evolution makes me a "server" 
of the ABC list. I serve as the list administrator when I mail it out. I 
take the responsibility for adding someone else if they request subscribing 
and I also remove those who ask to be removed.

Thus as list server I know it would make the list administration better if I 
had automatic rather than manual sub/unsub for Express/Evolution.
(request #1)

It would also make things better for me as list server if there was a 
"reflector expression", eg <ABC> in the subject line, which would 
automatically post a reply from any one list member to all on the list.
(request #2)

Nobody has yet said these two requests are unreasonable for use by PRIVATE 
list administrators.


> Evolution and Outlook Express, on their own, cannot send or receive
> email.

In plain English, yes they do send to all 50 people on ABC via ISP and 
others en route.
And I am the sender.

They only talk to a email server or MTA.  For most people,
> this is commonly their ISPs email server (in your case Shaw's).  Since
> Shaw owns and administers their email server, they can setup whatever
> rules they like (no more than X number of emails sent at a time, or
> per day.  No attachments bigger than X MB, etc.).  In reality, Shaw
> will likely "allow" just about any mail client that complies to their
> Terms of Service (some examples might be Mozilla Thunderbird,
> Microsoft Outlook, Kmail, etc.)  they likely only provide setup
> instructions and basic support on how to connect to their email server
> for Evolution and/or Outlook Express.

Certainly. And I know of no rules which would be violated by having my two 
requests above met in SW on this computer.

My question then is HOW they can be met and that is why the new PC with 
Majordomo and Ubuntu is still at the puter shop.

> No residential Internet connection that I have ever heard of allows
> running a server of any type from it.

I am not running a "server" in the technical sense of that word. I am 
running a list server in the layman's terminology as previously explained.

 You may be able to run it or
> work around their "blocks", but it is pretty much always against their
> Terms of Service (which I believe an earlier poster has pointed out).
> If you really want to run a mailing list server and don't want to run
> it on anyone else's equipment (for fear that they may disconnect you
> or something), then you best bet would likely be to go to a local
> computer consultant (hopefully one that supports Linux), have them
> help you install mailing list software like mailman and/or majordomo,
> and then either get a "business class"  Internet connection or
> collocate the server somewhere.

There is nothing to get around. No rules are violated.


> Please understand, trying to turn Evolution into a MTA/mailing list
> server would be like trying to make a car fly when you have a plane
> sitting right next to you.

I thought s few new lines of code on the Evolution car might do the job.
Nobody has said that cannot be done.

I also thought Majordomo might be the airplane so I had it downloaded by 
shop A.

The question I have not yet had answered is whether Majordomo can be used 
for my limited and private list purposes (which violate no Shaw rule) by 
configuring it accordingly or whether ANY use of Majordomo would violate a 
Shaw rule.
Do you know?

 Evolution only presents a nice way to
> read/send email from a email server.  It is not an email server
> itself.  In direct answer to your question of:
>
>> If they are improved Shaw won't allow them? Is that political?
>
> Although I do not speak for Shaw, I can probably give a good idea of
> their policies.  Shaw, likely, doesn't care what software you use or
> what it is named.  It only cares what that software does.

And what I want to do violates no Shaw rule.

  It is fine
> with you running email clients (Evolution, Outlook Express), as long
> as you stay within their rules.  Shaw does not want you running a
> server of any type on your residential connection.

Again, a private list server as I have defined it does not violate any Shaw 
rule.

 This is not
> political.

What is political seems to be the willingness to have two reasonable 
requests for SW upgrading met as above.

Is it so difficult to improve the Evolution code?

Isn't it for such purposes that Linux was put forward?

  As I said before, I have never seen any residential
> Internet service that allowed a server of any type.  They always want
> to you get their "business class" service or to not host servers on
> their network at all.

  If a program, say Evolution was "improved" as
> you suggest to act as a server, rather than just a client, then they
> would likely take issue with it.

Only if they make new rules.

 It is no different than if I somehow
> "improved" Solitaire (the game) to somehow cause DDoS attacks.  They
> don't care if I play Solitaire on my computer, even if I do it all
> day.  They would only care if my "improved Solitaire" began affecting
> their network.  In all, they could care less what software you run on
> your computer, or what it is called.  They only care how it
> affects/utilizes the Internet connection they provide you.

Then they would need new rules.

> Hopefully this will clear things up, but possibly it won't.  I just
> thought I would give it a try.

Thanks for the effort.

> Preston
>
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