Software Update: Mailman 2.1.5 RC2

Mailman is an open source system for maintaining mailing lists and newsletters. The built-in web interface provides quick and easy access for users and administrators. It also supports archiving, automatic bounce processing, content filtering and spam filters, as well as 25 different languages† Mailman is largely developed in the Python programming language and recently the second release candidate of version 2.1.5 has been released. The changelog looks like this:

• The qrunner system has changed to use only one file per message. However the configuration variable METADATA_FORMAT has been removed, and support for SAVE_MSGS_AS_PICKLES has been changed. The latter no longer writes messages as plain text. Instead, they are stored as pickles or plain strings, using the text pickle format. This still makes them non-binary files readable and editable by humans.
  bin/dumpdb also works differently. It will print out the entire pickle file (with more verbosity) and if used with ‘python -i’, it binds msg to a list of all objects found in the pickle file.
• The bounce processor has been redesigned so that now when an address’s bounce score reaches the threshold, that address will be sent a probe message. Only if the probe bounces will the address be disabled. The score is reset to zero when the probe is sent.
• The pending database has been changed from a global pickle file, to a unique pickle file per mailing list.
• Disallow multiple password retrievals.
• SF patch #810675 which adds a “Discard all messages marked Defer” button for faster admindb maintenance.
• New language: Turkish.