I subscribe to mailing lists on hendry@dabase.com, but I send from different shells where the return path isn’t the same.
So time and time again I can’t contribute to free software mailing lists. Mailman typically gives me a:
Is being held until the list moderator can review it for approval. The reason it is being held: Post by non-member to a members-only list
Whilst the human moderator usually never moderates (blame spam) or moderates far too late. Thank you Debian list managers for getting your policy right…
The fix for Linux users is simple. A mutt configuration like:
set envelope_from=no
set sendmail='/usr/lib/sendmail -oem -oi -f yourremail@example.com'
Will normalise your return path, no matter which shell you use.
Free software mailing lists suck. Especially Apache’s.
- Many of them have a CRAP Web interface or worse:
- Posting limited to subscribers
For weeks I have been struggling with Apache mailing lists (apache-users and spamassassin) and now recently with mutt lists.
I know with Apache lists you can use a special syntax:
You can start a subscription for an alternate address, for example "john@host.domain", just add a hyphen and your address (with '=' instead of '@') after the command word: <users-subscribe-john=host.domain@httpd.apache.org>
But when I do it via mutt or a `echo test | mail users-unsubscribe-hendry=dabase.com@httpd.apache.org`. I get no response from the automated mailing list manager. 
So, If I ever get subscribed it’s generally thanks to the mailing list owner.
Then after lurking a bit, I try post. That never works as the return paths don’t match the email I am subscribed with. Return paths change all the time depending on which machine I sent it from. It could be anything from:
- hendry@pico.dreamhost.com (from my shell)
- hendry@laptop.dabase.com (from my laptop)
- hendry@soltecsoftware.com.au (from work)
And the first two aren’t working email addresses!
If you must filter, can’t you filter on my From OR Reply-To email address FFS: hendry@iki.fi
All I suggest is for Apache to start using something usable like Google Groups for user support.
Does anyone else feel my frustration?