On Tue, 2012-09-04 at 17:58 -0400, Phil Pennock wrote:
> On 2012-09-04 at 11:31 +0200, Cyborg wrote:
> > Am 04.09.2012 06:53, schrieb Phil Pennock:
> > > Exim's not geared, as is, for large backlogs. With enough grunt, you
> > > can overcome that, but it won't be as capable as a major email-pushing
> > > engine.
> > >
> >
> > And you only need that for spamming ( legal or illegal ). I.e. my last
> > multidomain server park handelt 500k mails I/O a day
> > per server with exim and it was enough. And i don't know how many we
> > blocked per day , but it was massive :)
>
> Spam is unsolicited, by its nature. If it's legal, it's probably not
> spam, and calling it such is unnecessarily confrontational, which
> doesn't lead to resolving problems peacefully to the benefit of the
> people reading the mail, who are the folks that matter the most.
>
> If you have a production site which can generate _notification_ emails,
> which are fully under the control of the user, then that is solicited.
> Each mail is different, each is wanted.
>
> There's clear white mail in volume, such as notifications from Github.
>
> Then there are social sites which send a few types of mail; some are
> definitely wanted (notifications of replies, new followers, all
> controllable) and some are more dubious ("hey, you've been absent! Come
> back, we're great!").
>
> I view legitimate mail as falling into a few categories:
>
> (1) direct personal mail
> (2) mailing-list mail, which has been subscribed to, where each message
> has been generated by a human, occasionally including a spam
> message, which doesn't mean the list itself is spam, just that it's
> sometimes abused as a vector
> (3) transactional emails, which act as a notification; this could be a
> purchase receipt, a push notification, a social media action
> (3.1) transactional emails, via a mailing-list, such as a "commits"
> mailing-list. An example of this is <exim-cvs@???>, which
> exemplifies both the concept and the problem when a particular
> technology is embedded in the name, since all messages to that
> list come from git, not CVS.
> (4) Reserved, because the above may not be complete and I do not
> authorise citing it to smack down a party to a conversation.
>
> The simple act of sending large quantities of mail does not make a site
> a spammer. It's cause to pause and check cautiously to investigate, and
> I fully understand why many folks will decline to answer questions on a
> list where folks ask for help doing it. After all, the sites sending a
> large quantity of mail legitimately tend to do things like spend enough
> money to hire expert postmasters to set things up and work with
> receiving sites to resolve problems and leave folks happy that they're
> not a spam source.
>
> -Phil
>
Bulk email will always raise heckles. It's not something I'm involved in
- quite the contrary - I work in *blocking* it.
But as you rightly point out, bulk email in itself is not spam. Facebook
send bulk, eBay send bulk, Amazon send bulk etc. Whilst it can be argued
that some of this is irritating and spam like, permission based bulk
emailing is a fact of life. In fact this very mailing list is bulk by
nature.
With that in mind, and the fact that email is still an effective
communication medium (just as the Post Office how much of their business
it has eaten) it follows that some people who work with MTA's may, at
some point, be asked to look at providing solutions for legal bulk
emailing. It's not witchcraft or black science - just a legitimate fact
of life (even if some of us find it quite depressing).
As our economy struggles to find its feet, communication, advertising
and marketing are going to play their part, and email is going to play a
part in that - like it or lump it.
FOOS and Bulk Email are nothing new. There are great projects out there
(
http://www.openemm.org/). My question was just a hypothetical based on
some outlandish claims of an MTA provider who happens to charge a little
shy of $4k a year in licensing. I had hoped it to be a valid and
interesting question that got a good cross-sectional technical response.
On this occasion it was shot down and the best technical replies came
from the Postfix list, where there was (unusually) no abuse or fighting,
just a great response. Something that used to happen here :-(
I've been posting here for a couple of years and I don't profess to have
the experience or skill of many here. I'm physically disabled with
failing sight and dyslexic too boot, making things a bit of a challenge
some times. To be able to ask skilled experts for views and help is a
lifeline to me, and I apologise if I ruffled any feathers doing it. I
wish I never asked now!
