Presenters
Jill Gemmill, University of Alabama at Birmingham and Chair, I2 MACE-MList Working Group
John-Paul Robinson, University of Alabama at Birmingham
Jim Phelps, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Serge Aumont, Comité Réseau des Universités (FR), Sympa Developer
Olivier Salaün, Comité Réseau des Universités (FR), Sympa Developer

An objective of this BoF was to informally survey participants about their experience and requirements of mailing list software. When queried about current mailing list deficiencies, participants had the following responses:

· The University of Washington is currently migrating from Mailman. The conversion to the new system has presented some difficulty with web authentication for web based functions using NetID’s. Further complications arise when attempting to maintain the same authentication support utilizing the traditional e-mail password authentication model. The originating UI might not support login for additional pages. Thus, additional pages might require additional logins.

· Participants also reported issues with current mailing list software in managing multiple lists and the delegation of administrative responsibilities across multiple lists. It was suggested that a more convenient solution is to make one global change and the mailing list software could propagate that change into the other required areas.

· It was also suggested that mailing list home pages not only include information about the list, but also include a list of desired activities for the list.

· Finally, when posting to a list using a digital signature, mailing list software should forward that signature in the outgoing mail.

Discussions at the Sympa workshop indicate that Sympa accommodates the above suggestions.

Jill Gemmill, John-Paul Robinson and Jim Phelps presented the Domain, Object and Mailing List Service models developed in the MACE-MList WG. The models are intended to highlight middleware-enabled functions of mailing list software. These models can be found on the WG page at http://middleware.internet2.edu/mlist/.

Serge Aumont and Olivier Salaün from the Comité Réseau des Universités (FR) presented Sympa functionality. Sympa interacts with information systems through list definition using XML, list owners and members are updated using LDAP directories and SQL Authorization is performed using LDAP directories and authentication is performed using Shibboleth or other attribute managers. Subscribers are added to lists by subscribing through an e-mail or a web interface. Subscribing populates the LDAP directory; the database is audited and then populated in Sympa. The Sympa task manager shares the internal database with other applications. List managers, list owners and list editors can be defined in the same way as list members (LDAP directories and SQL). List managers manage subscribers and editors manage content. Data comes from information systems in XML format. A subscription can be restricted based on eduPerson LDAP attributes.