GOALS

Some Goals for Majordomo2
-------------------------

General:

Provide a system that exceeds Majordomo1 in all ways while still remaining
'compatible'.  To be more powerful, easier to install and maintain, more
secure, and faster than Majordomo1.  To be, at least on some level, simpler
than Majordomo1.

What this means is that all existing functionality must be duplicated.  The
list as seen from a subscriber must not change except where new
functionality is added.  Old instructions must still work.

Some change from the list owner standpoint can be allowed, but only to fix
broken behavior.

Simplicity is in the eye of the beholder; certainly the tighter internal
integration between the various parts makes for a more complicated
situation than Majordomo1's disconnected pieces strung together with mail
aliases.  Internally, though, the code paths are well ordered and all
mechanisms are general.  Gone is the mess of global variables and painful
nonlocal dependencies.  Also gone is the need to hack away things like
subject prefixes and footers from archives and digests because the parts
weren't integrated well enough.

Speed is the most difficult; Majordomo is larger and the interdependencies
add up to increased compilation time.  On the other hand, the use of
databases and such can post great gains when dealing with even moderately
sized lists.  The daemon mode would serve to eliminate almost all
compilation overhead.


Alpha 2:

Master address and alias databases.
Working BerkDB backend.

Alpha 3:

Digests.

Basic bounce handling.


Alpha 4:

?