Re: Supporting multipart/alternative email with text/plain parts.

["Carlos O'Donell" <carlos at systemhalted dot org>]

On Sun, Mar 11, 2012 at 11:48 AM, Carlos O'Donell
<carlos@systemhalted.org> wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 2, 2012 at 1:50 PM, Carlos O'Donell <carlos@systemhalted.org> wrote:
>> The sourceware.org ezmlm-idx configuration for this mailing list
>> does not allow text/html email.
>>
>> I have been contacted by people who would like to volunteer and
>> participate on this list but are currently sending multipart/alternative
>> emails (text/html and text/plain) and being rejected by the
>> mailing list software.
>>
>> In a desire to see volunteers of every kind participate in the
>> community I have reached out to overseers to change the ezmlm-idx
>> configuration to support multipart/alterjative where there is a
>> minimum of a text/plain part in the alternatives list.
>>
>> This would allow broader support for:
>>
>> * volunteers who are using the default GMail setup which sends
>> multipart/alternative with both text/html and text/plain portions.
>>
>> * volunteers who genuinely like formatted email.
>>
>> Just to clarify, the list itself will only record and mail out the
>> text/plain part of the incoming email.
>>
>> I will keep the list updated on the progress.
>
> I have received one positive response from overseers
> but no specific commitment to act on the request.
>
> I have pinged overseers again for comment.
>
> Cheers,
> Carlos.

I have not received an official consensus from
overseers@sourceware.org, but after much discussion the following
conclusion was reached by myself, and nobody opposed this summary:

* There is loose agreement that it would be a good thing to
 use DIR/mimekeep to allow users with multipart/alternative
 email to participate in mailing list discussions as long as
 they had MIME parts that matched the parts allowed on the
 list. After all, more project volunteers is a good thing.

* Unfortunately many of the mime parts we want to reject are
 also the default parts currently in use for sending
 patches, diffs, etc. Therefore if we don't outright reject
 emails with text/html parts then the application/octect-stream
 part (which we have to allow for Base64 encoded attached patches)
 of the spammers message will arrive on the list and that is
 not acceptable.

* Unfortunately the use of DIR/mimekeep and really any system
 that strips MIME parts would cause confusion amongst users
 and result in additional and unacceptable support load
 for postmaster (given the current volunteers).

It would seem to me that the position of overseers is
that the request to use DIR/mimekeep to enable posting of
multipart/alternative email with text/plain parts carries
with it an unacceptably high price.

Therefore those volunteers that wish to continue using
multipart/alternative, or must use it because of your choice
of client, or difficulty in configuring otherwise, I am sorry but
you will not be able to participate on libc-alpha, or libc-help
until you switch to a MUA that can send text/plain only.

My personal opinion is that we should be testing out the
savannah mailing lists which run a much more modern
mailman setup that has features above and beyond those
of ezmlm-idx, including allowing the community to share
in the burden if moderating email that matches certain
criteria.

Thank you everyone for your time and patience.

Cheers,
Carlos.