Re: non- were you censored too? how to beat it

Re: non- were you censored too? how to beat it

[John Sullivan]

I'm sorry about this, everyone. Daniel seems to have done some scraping
and compiled a list of addresses on his own, from his
libreplanet-discuss archives. This is the list he's encouraging people
to BCC.

People did not voluntarily join that BCC list, and there is no
unsubscribe or opt-out link. In many countries, unsolicited bulk email
is illegal, so probably not a good idea to BCC your messages to it.

He's encouraging people to do things that will make the messages appear
to be coming from the libreplanet-discuss list -- but they are not. If
unsure, check the message headers -- messages actually from the mailing
list will have an "@libreplanet.org" Return-path.

He did create the other opt-in mailing list he let everyone know about,
so I'd suggest joining up there if you want to continue the
conversations with him. That way, conversations can continue between
people who are actually consenting to them.

I think everyone can see from the past couple of weeks that we aren't
censoring or even discouraging critical conversation here. We're just
not going to have people subverting the very framework of voluntary
respectful conversation, and definitely not anyone implying that people
are responsible for others' *deaths*, or continuing personal harassment
campaigns that have been blocked in other forums.

There may be *delays* in your posts appearing, because we are now having
to review posts before they are distributed. We'll do our best at
minimizing those delays, and we'll remove the moderation flag as soon as
we can.

-john

-- 
John Sullivan | Executive Director, Free Software Foundation
GPG Key: A462 6CBA FF37 6039 D2D7 5544 97BA 9CE7 61A0 963B
https://status.fsf.org/johns | https://fsf.org/blogs/RSS

Do you use free software? Donate to join the FSF and support freedom at
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Re: non- were you censored too? how to beat it

[klez]

For anyone interested (at this point I'm not interested anymore in 
avoiding hurting Daniel Pocock feelings) he pulled the same shit with 
the FSFE mailing list. And when told he was doing something that in our 
jurisdiction (Europe) was probably not legitimate he had the gall to 
tell the FSFE that *they* were in violation because, according to him, 
they were the ones that kept a list of former fellows' emails after the 
program was destitute and former fellows were moved to another program 
(for all intents and purpose the actual was just a rename).

I kept my mouth shut until now because in both occasions you made some 
interesting points. But enough is enough.

Frankly, Daniel, I'll be sure to mark any and each email from you as 
spam, from now on.

Greetings
Federico

On 9/23/19 5:51 PM, John Sullivan wrote:
> I'm sorry about this, everyone. Daniel seems to have done some scraping
> and compiled a list of addresses on his own, from his
> libreplanet-discuss archives. This is the list he's encouraging people
> to BCC.
> 
> People did not voluntarily join that BCC list, and there is no
> unsubscribe or opt-out link. In many countries, unsolicited bulk email
> is illegal, so probably not a good idea to BCC your messages to it.
> 
> He's encouraging people to do things that will make the messages appear
> to be coming from the libreplanet-discuss list -- but they are not. If
> unsure, check the message headers -- messages actually from the mailing
> list will have an "@libreplanet.org" Return-path.
> 
> He did create the other opt-in mailing list he let everyone know about,
> so I'd suggest joining up there if you want to continue the
> conversations with him. That way, conversations can continue between
> people who are actually consenting to them.
> 
> I think everyone can see from the past couple of weeks that we aren't
> censoring or even discouraging critical conversation here. We're just
> not going to have people subverting the very framework of voluntary
> respectful conversation, and definitely not anyone implying that people
> are responsible for others' *deaths*, or continuing personal harassment
> campaigns that have been blocked in other forums.
> 
> There may be *delays* in your posts appearing, because we are now having
> to review posts before they are distributed. We'll do our best at
> minimizing those delays, and we'll remove the moderation flag as soon as
> we can.
> 
> -john
> 

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Re: non- were you censored too? how to beat it

[Dmitry Alexandrov]

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John Sullivan <johns@fsf.org> wrote:
> I'm sorry about this, everyone. Daniel seems to have done some scraping and compiled a list of addresses on his own, from his libreplanet-discuss archives. This is the list he's encouraging people to BCC.

Well.  At least, I hope his list would not be as broken technically as this is used to be: before the last downtime it chucked out HTML parts, so signatures became invalid.  When the issue was brought up half a year ago, Ian Kelling <sysadmin@gnu.org> said he was about to look into it when doing a upgrade [1].  And indeed, something changed: now it does not cut parts off, but performs a lossy conversion to plain text.

So a message composed with a typical out of a box MUA and passed through this list now have *two* autogenerated parts: one by sender’s MUA and another by gnu.org’s Mailman, which confuses subscribers [2].  Signatures are still broken, of course.  My plaudits to anyone who came to that idea. :-D.

(That’s besides everything else: mangling ‘from’ field, etc.)

[1] <rt-4.2.14-7-g171caae-16406-1555002176-945.1362369-6-0@rt.gnu.org>
[2] <6ef9c890005864b36666c78950f7e0a3@basiscraft.com>

> I think everyone can see from the past couple of weeks that we aren't censoring or even discouraging critical conversation here.

Sorry, I presumably missed the point; are you saying that messages that do not pass censors are published somewhere else?

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GNU Mailman settings for this list

[Ian Kelling]

Dmitry Alexandrov <321942@gmail.com> writes:

> John Sullivan <johns@fsf.org> wrote:
>> I'm sorry about this, everyone. Daniel seems to have done some scraping and compiled a list of addresses on his own, from his libreplanet-discuss archives. This is the list he's encouraging people to BCC.
>
> Well.  At least, I hope his list would not be as broken technically as this is used to be: before the last downtime it chucked out HTML parts, so signatures became invalid.  When the issue was brought up half a year ago, Ian Kelling <sysadmin@gnu.org> said he was about to look into it when doing a upgrade [1].  And indeed, something changed: now it does not cut parts off, but performs a lossy conversion to plain text.
>
> So a message composed with a typical out of a box MUA and passed through this list now have *two* autogenerated parts: one by sender’s MUA and another by gnu.org’s Mailman, which confuses subscribers [2].  Signatures are still broken, of course.  My plaudits to anyone who came to that idea. :-D.
>
> (That’s besides everything else: mangling ‘from’ field, etc.)
>

Should Mailman convert text/html parts to plain text? Currently this is
set to "yes".

There's good and bad things about this setting. One bad thing is that
gpg signatures on html email will be rendered invalid.

For this list, I think its best to keep that setting on, because html
email is a risk of security, software freedom and privacy unless you
take very tech savvy measures against it, and this is not a list we
should expect that or expose people to that. Lots of people reading this
list like me, have their email client set to convert any html email to
plain text.

Mangling the from field happens when someone sends from a strict DMARC
domain (a newish email security standard that is not widespread),
because mailman modifies all messages to add the subject prefix and
footer, and by that standard, it has to change the From line. Plain text
conversion is also a message modification that requires the
change. Subject prefixes and footers provide valuable information,
especially to users who are not familiar with email lists, eg: someone
signs up for this list, new messages appear in their inbox, but they
can't tell its from the list or how to filter them or how to turn it
off. For users who are familiar with mailing lists, or are sending
patches, they should generally be turned off, and we are turning them
off for a lot of lists, but for this list, its more important to have
settings that are most helpful to new users.

I'm not sure, but the footer might also invalidate mime gpg
signatures. If that is the case, it means to send gpg signed mail to
this list, you need to send inline, not mime. And it will always need to
be plain text.

-- 
Ian Kelling | Senior Systems Administrator, Free Software Foundation
GPG Key: B125 F60B 7B28 7FF6 A2B7  DF8F 170A F0E2 9542 95DF
https://fsf.org | https://gnu.org

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Re: GNU Mailman settings for this list

[Dmitry Alexandrov]

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Ian Kelling <iank@fsf.org> wrote:
> Dmitry Alexandrov <321942@gmail.com> writes:
>> Well.  At least, I hope his list would not be as broken technically as this is used to be: before the last downtime it chucked out HTML parts, so signatures became invalid.  When the issue was brought up half a year ago, Ian Kelling <sysadmin@gnu.org> said he was about to look into it when doing a upgrade [1].  And indeed, something changed: now it does not cut parts off, but performs a lossy conversion to plain text.
>>
>> So a message composed with a typical out of a box MUA and passed through this list now have *two* autogenerated parts: one by sender’s MUA and another by gnu.org’s Mailman, which confuses subscribers [2].  Signatures are still broken, of course.
>>
>> (That’s besides everything else: mangling ‘from’ field, etc.)
>>
>
> Should Mailman convert text/html parts to plain text? Currently this is set to "yes".

When plain text alternative is already present?  Of course, not.

> There's good and bad things about this setting.

There is no good things about _current_ settings: who needs _two_ autogenerated plain text parts?  Goodness of the former settings, when HTML parts was cut off, is also doubtful.

> One bad thing is that gpg signatures on html email will be rendered invalid.

Another bad thing that many MUAs have a bad habit of autohardwrapping plain text, while being incapable to do that properly (well, generally speaking it’s a task unsolvable without AI).  I am tired of sorting out the quoting mess that they produce.

> For this list, I think its best to keep that setting on, because html email is a risk of security, software freedom and privacy unless you take very tech savvy measures against it

This is exaggeration.  There is no more security risks than of viewing a page on the Web.  As for privacy, there is nothing ‘very tech savvy’ in disabling external images; not to say, that many MUAs do that by default nowadays, while many email providers, on the contrary, still reveal sender IP (both local and public, if differ) in every letter sent.

> and this is not a list we should expect that or expose people to that.

Neither are able to protect them: if someone would like to send a malicious message to a list subscriber, you could do noting to prevent him.

> Lots of people reading this list like me, have their email client set to convert any html email to plain text.

And lots of people, like me, prefer to see what was actually sent by an author, not a result of lossy conversion.

> Mangling the from field happens when someone sends from a strict DMARC domain (a newish email security standard that is not widespread), because mailman modifies all messages to add the subject prefix and footer

Yes, I am aware of that.  That why I was glad, when you said that they would go away after upgrade.  And disappointed, when they did not.

> and by that standard, it has to change the From line. Plain text conversion is also a message modification that requires the change. Subject prefixes and footers provide valuable information, especially to users who are not familiar with email lists, eg: someone signs up for this list, new messages appear in their inbox, but they can't tell its from the list

Of course, he can: they normally have a libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org in either ‘to’ or ‘cc’.

> or how to filter them or how to turn it off.

Then he would do what he usually does when meet a technical difficulty: either google or ask.

While providing him with tag in a subject and instructions in footer is nothing else but teaching him a wrong practice, most prominent downsides of which you’ve just outlined.  In the best case, he will have to learn the proper way nevertheless when encounters a list that does not do it, in the worst — will demand from that other list to support the bad practice too.

> For users who are familiar with mailing lists, or are sending patches, they should generally be turned off, and we are turning them off for a lot of lists, but for this list, its more important to have settings that are most helpful to new users.

I believe, users new to mailing lists should be introduced to a pristine system, not a system full of quirks.

If we want to be helpful to new subscribers, why do not explain how to unsubscribe from a list or filter it in a welcoming message?  Mailman on gnu.org does send a pretty useless welcoming message to any new user anyway, does not it?

> I'm not sure, but the footer might also invalidate mime gpg signatures.

No, it should not.  Are my signatures invalid?

It does invalidate DKIM signatures, if a body is signed too, though.  And yes, this practice exists and there are all chances that it will become more widespread in the future.

By the way, IIRC, there was complaints, that messages of this list tend to be classified by major email providers as spam more often than those of other lists @gnu.org.  Despite that DKIM per se is not intended as antispam measure, the massive flow of mail with DKIM signatures invalidated due to subject tagging, HTML excising and adding footer might be the reason nevertheless.  Who knows what proprietary spam classifier might found shady?

> If that is the case, it means to send gpg signed mail to this list, you need to send inline, not mime. And it will always need to be plain text.

(sarcasm-mode +1)
Which would undoubtedly make this list much more user-friendly!  That was the goal, is not it?
(sarcasm-mode -1)

In short, I propose to refrain from _any_ mangling of messages.

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Re: GNU Mailman settings for this list

[Ian Kelling]

Dmitry Alexandrov <321942@gmail.com> writes:
>
> In short, I propose to refrain from _any_ mangling of messages.

I brought up some points, but I don't feel too strongly one way or the
other. I think John S is fond of the footer. Of course we care a lot
what people on this list want, so if people care, they should chime in.

-- 
Ian Kelling | Senior Systems Administrator, Free Software Foundation
GPG Key: B125 F60B 7B28 7FF6 A2B7  DF8F 170A F0E2 9542 95DF
https://fsf.org | https://gnu.org

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Re: GNU Mailman settings for this list

[Dmitry Alexandrov]

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Ian Kelling <iank@fsf.org> wrote:
> Dmitry Alexandrov <321942@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>> In short, I propose to refrain from _any_ mangling of messages.
>
> I brought up some points, but I don't feel too strongly one way or the other. I think John S is fond of the footer.

If the reason for a footer to exist is to remind how to unsubscribe, I’d like to note, that:

1. It actually says nothing about unsubscription.

2. MUAs that an unsophisticated user would probably use, that is unfortunately web-based and nonfree, normally support ‘List-Unsubscribe’ header.  Namely:
- Google Mail [1]
- Yandex Mail [2]
- Yahoo Mail  [3]
- GMX         [only anecdotal evidence so far]
- Outlook.com [4]
and actually probably most of them.

[1] https://support.google.com/mail/answer/8151?hl=en
[2] https://yandex.com/support/mail/web/spam.html
    (to avoid running nonfree scripts, disable CSS and search for “you can unsubscribe right from your mailbox”)
[3] https://www.oath.com/press/introducing-reminders-and-unsubscribe-features-in-yahoo-mail/
[4] https://www.groovypost.com/howto/unsubscribe-newsletters-outlook-com/

> Of course we care a lot what people on this list want, so if people care, they should chime in.

Yes, and there was one opinion voiced the last time:

| Personally I dislike these and would love to see them removed from all mailing lists.
— Bob Proulx <bob@proulx.com> [5]

[5] <20190222140845251389751@bob.proulx.com>

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Re: GNU Mailman settings for this list

[John Sullivan]

Dmitry Alexandrov <321942@gmail.com> writes:

> Ian Kelling <iank@fsf.org> wrote:
>> Dmitry Alexandrov <321942@gmail.com> writes:
>>>
>>> In short, I propose to refrain from _any_ mangling of messages.
>>
>> I brought up some points, but I don't feel too strongly one way or the other. I think John S is fond of the footer.
>
> If the reason for a footer to exist is to remind how to unsubscribe, I’d like to note, that:
>
> 1. It actually says nothing about unsubscription.
>

Good point.

I don't have a strong feeling on this; obviously if we keep the footer
it should be edited to actually give direct unsubscribe
instructions/link instead of pointing people to the general list page
from which they can unsubscribe.

-john

-- 
John Sullivan | Executive Director, Free Software Foundation
GPG Key: A462 6CBA FF37 6039 D2D7 5544 97BA 9CE7 61A0 963B
https://status.fsf.org/johns | https://fsf.org/blogs/RSS

Do you use free software? Donate to join the FSF and support freedom at
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Re: GNU Mailman settings for this list

[Dmitry Alexandrov]

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Dmitry Alexandrov <321942@gmail.com> wrote:
> Ian Kelling <iank@fsf.org> wrote:
>> Should Mailman convert text/html parts to plain text? Currently this is set to "yes".
>
> Of course, no.
>
>> There's good and bad things about this setting.
>
> There is no good things…
>
>> One bad thing is that gpg signatures on html email will be rendered invalid.
>
> Another bad thing that many MUAs have a bad habit of autohardwrapping plain text, while being incapable to do that properly.  I am tired of sorting out the quoting mess that they produce.

FWIW, we’ve just got a perfect example of what I meant by ‘mess’:


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  On Monday, September 30, 2019, 2:44:49 PM EDT, Deb Nicholson <deb@eximiousproductions.com> wrote:  
 
   On Mon, Sep 30, 2019 at 1:25 PM Danny Spitzberg
  <[1]stationaery@gmail.com> wrote:

        I thought Bradley’s 2018 “state of the copyleft union“ talk at
        LibrePlanet was a rare and important bit of positive
        constructive criticism for free/libre software.
        Sadly, it was met with mixed reactions from the audience-
    including RMS
        who apparently saw it as defeatist, because he yelled “We’re not
    licked
        yet!!” and then stormed the stage to give an impromptu rebuttal.
        I don’t have much context for other contributions from Bradley,
    but
        that one talk was a breath of fresh air and levelheadedness.
        (Bradly, do you know the whereabouts of that talk, the notes, or
    dare I
        imagine, the video?)

>>>I think the FSF chose not to make that one available. Danny, thank you  also for speaking in favor of constructive criticism. No movement can
  survive an allergy to discussion -- especially the discussion of
  problems and challenges -- such as all too sadly been happening on this
  list lately.
  The assumption that any discussion of tactics, or how the free software
  movement might respond to changes in society or changes in the industry
  is necessarily a smear campaign by Microsoft/Facebook/Etc has been
  extremely tiresome.
  Best,
  Deb
I found the talk easily on libre planet media.  I thought it was a good talk. Bradly called for employees to stop being so afraid of their employers and stand up and ask for the software written during employment to be madecopyleft under a free software license (like the gpl v3)  Richard Stallman was his usual self, but of course when Bradley mentioned Linux he really just meant Linux the kernel. 

State of the copyleft union — GNU MediaGoblin

| 
| 
|  | 
State of the copyleft union — GNU MediaGoblin


 |

 |

 |


There wouldn't really be any reason to hide that video.  People who may not have joined the FSF or gone to Libre Planet could still benefit from it if they care about free software and write software at work. 
Also, maybe some people thought it was defeatist, or thought that maybe copyleft was not necessarily the best tool to enforce software freedom.  I think the points made in this talk put an end more or less to that idea.  It was certainly not a lay down and bsd everything talk.  

  
 

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   On Monday, September 30, 2019, 2:44:49 PM EDT, Deb Nicholson
   <deb@eximiousproductions.com> wrote:
     On Mon, Sep 30, 2019 at 1:25 PM Danny Spitzberg
     <[1][1]stationaery@gmail.com> wrote:
           I thought Bradley€s 2018 €state of the copyleft union€ talk at
           LibrePlanet was a rare and important bit of positive
           constructive criticism for free/libre software.
           Sadly, it was met with mixed reactions from the audience-
       including RMS
           who apparently saw it as defeatist, because he yelled €We€re
   not
       licked
           yet!!€ and then stormed the stage to give an impromptu
   rebuttal.
           I don€t have much context for other contributions from Bradley,
       but
           that one talk was a breath of fresh air and levelheadedness.
           (Bradly, do you know the whereabouts of that talk, the notes,
   or
       dare I
           imagine, the video?)
   >>>I think the FSF chose not to make that one available. Danny, thank
   you
     also for speaking in favor of constructive criticism. No movement can
     survive an allergy to discussion -- especially the discussion of
     problems and challenges -- such as all too sadly been happening on
   this
     list lately.
     The assumption that any discussion of tactics, or how the free
   software
     movement might respond to changes in society or changes in the
   industry
     is necessarily a smear campaign by Microsoft/Facebook/Etc has been
     extremely tiresome.
     Best,
     Deb
   I found the talk easily on libre planet media.  I thought it was a good
   talk. Bradly called for employees to stop being so afraid of their
   employers and stand up and ask for the software written during
   employment to be made
   copyleft under a free software license (like the gpl v3)  Richard
   Stallman was his usual self, but of course when Bradley mentioned Linux
   he really just meant Linux the kernel.
   [2]State of the copyleft union € GNU MediaGoblin

State of the copyleft union € GNU MediaGoblin

   There wouldn't really be any reason to hide that video.  People who may
   not have joined the FSF or gone to Libre Planet could still benefit
   from it if they care about free software and write software at work.
   Also, maybe some people thought it was defeatist, or thought that maybe
   copyleft was not necessarily the best tool to enforce software
   freedom.  I think the points made in this talk put an end more or less
   to that idea.  It was certainly not a lay down and bsd everything
   talk.

References

   Visible links
   1. mailto:stationaery@gmail.com
   2. https://media.libreplanet.org/u/libreplanet/m/state-of-the-copyleft-union/

   Hidden links:
   4. https://media.libreplanet.org/u/libreplanet/m/state-of-the-copyleft-union/

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Please, stop it.

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