Re: [Groff] Blocking spam (was: goodbye to the groff list)

[Keith Marshall]

On Wednesday 21 April 2004 3:53 am, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
> On Wednesday, 21 April 2004 at  3:21:03 +0100, MJ Ray wrote:
> > On 2004-04-20 18:20:57 +0100 Meg McRoberts <address@hidden>
> >
> > wrote:
> >> Yes, these rules would indeed cut down on malware spread by email, but
> >> forbidding any attachments also throttles the usefulness of email.
> >
> > Personally, I think forbidding attachments on large discussion lists
> > is perfectly acceptable. Most things attached to a list message would
> > be a lot better off on the end of a URL and then we don't use so much
> > donated data transfer.
>
> Given that a lot of questions relate to broken output, typically
> PostScript, it seems reasonable to allow that kind of attachment.  The
> other kind that makes sense are digital signatures, such as mine.
> Mailman makes it easy to make that kind of exception and disallow all
> other attachments.

My preferred mechanism for submitting patches is to attach them as either 
zipped text, or zipped tarball.  I know I could just embed them as plain text 
in the body of the message, but some mail clients then do a remarkably good 
job of reformatting them beyond recognition; (Lotus Notes, which I am obliged 
to use at work is a prime example).

Thus, IMHO, unless we also allow any recognised zip formatted attachment, we 
would make the list much less convenient for the submission and discussion of 
patches.

Best regards,
Keith.