*New AIs*
[AI] {Jill} will revise the draft survey and send out to the list for review and comment
[AI] {Group} review the Mailing List Service Model diagram Jill sent with the 26-May agenda and comment

*Carried Forward*
[AI] {Steve Carmody} report back to the WG about the Sympa/Shibboleth discussions to date.
[AI] {Steve Olshansky} will investigate which working groups within Internet2 (if any) are working in the area of defining approval workflow and connect them with this group.
[AI] {Group} will design (via discussion on the list) a preliminary survey seeking input from members and their campus mailing list administrators to ascertain most desirable features and most absent features of existing mailing list software. This will be done prior to developing use cases.

*Attendees*

Jill Gemmill, University of Alabama - Birmingham
Steve Carmody, Brown University
Steve Olshansky, Internet2
Lisa Hogeboom, Internet2

*Discussion*

All communications and work of Internet2 WG’s is subject to the Internet2 Intellectual Property Framework http://members.internet2.edu/intellectualproperty.html, please review this page.

The following three efforts *may* overlap/complement the MACE-MList WG’s objectives:
· Some of the recent middleware awards by JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=middleware_announce
· Sakai http://www.sakaiproject.org/
· Internet2’s Signet WG http://middleware.internet2.edu/signet/

It was suggested that the Survey include questions directed at Virtual Organizations (VOs) to better understand VO issues. Some respondents may state that mailing lists are VO’s. Possible questions to ask VO’s include:
- Are they hosted on campus?
- Conversely, is the VO outsourced?
- Do they gather memberships from organizations?
- How do they manage their lists?
- Do VOs have any special security issues related to list management?
- Do VOs have unique international encoding issues on their lists?

The group discussed including grid environments in the survey process by sending the survey to key individuals within TeraGrid http://www.teragrid.org/ environments Currently, users are manually added to grids via a grid-mapfile. The file is then propagated to all systems in the grid. The process supports mailing lists and manages shared resources. It also provides for appropriate access to individuals and distribution of information based on an individual’s identity. However, this enrollment process is not scalable. The potential to extend role based access controls with groups to the grid environment exists.

The group clarified, “How does a mailing list management software handle multiple lists?” Traditionally, mailing lists authenticated an individual with an e-mail address and password. The preferred model authenticates an individual with a separate identity other than an e-mail address. Mailing list software could subsequently use the single-separate identity as the individual’s principal identifier for authentication. The mailing list software would then ascertain to which lists the individual is subscribed even if the individual used different e-mails and passwords for each list. Sympa’s management interface has the capability to auto-populate fields when adding a new member to a list after keying in the e-mail address, using a backend database. The non-desirable feature is that the key field is an e-mail address. However, since Sympa is already referring to a backend database, it is likely possible to program the database to operate by a primary ID other than an e-mail address. Mailman http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman.html has the ability to identify an individual using a primary identifier other than e-mail address.

A revised draft of the mailing list service model and survey will be sent to the group. Comments will be discussed on the next call.

The next call is Wednesday, June 9, 2004 at 12:00PM ET. This date may change due to schedule conflicts.