How to construct this port?

[Bill Moran]

In response to "Ion-Mihai \"IOnut\" Tetcu" <itetcu at FreeBSD.org>:

> On Thu, 28 Dec 2006 12:53:34 -0500
> Chuck Swiger <cswiger at mac.com> wrote:
> 
>  [ ... ]
> 
> > However, sometimes mail systems go down or block traffic for whatever
> > reason: postmaster's job is a thankless task, and this was true even
> > before spam and viral email appeared.  Nowadays, it's harder to get
> > things mostly right (nevermind "perfect"), so postmasters make
> > imperfect decisions because they are faced with undesirable tradeoffs.
> 
> Indeed :-(
> 
> However banning a hole country isn't a tradeoff in my book, it's just
> plain [inset_the_word_here]. And sine it's giving a 5XX code there's
> really no way to reach the person in question.

I disagree.  There are certain countries where the people in charge simply
don't seem to care whether or not they're spamming or not.  It takes a while
for me to get ticked off enough to block an entire country, but there are
three or four on my list right now.

Besides, it's _his_ mailserver.  He has the right to accept to deny mail
as he sees fit.  Trying to tell him otherwise is like trying to tell me that
I have to eat a certain type of food.

On the flip side, if you're unable to get in contact with him, why not just
file a PR?  At that rate, the standard timeouts go into effect.

> > It has not been my observation that insisting people not make any
> > mistakes commonly results in fewer mistakes being made, or much less,
> > in zero mistakes being made.  :-)  Rather than try to insist they
> > "are not allowed" to do something, I'd prefer to let people make
> > their own decisions and learn which ones are mistakes.  YMMV....
> 
> The problem is that, IMHO, this kind of rejecting affects us all as I
> think that being a port maintainer implies receiving and replying to
> users' email.

No, it doesn't.  "Port maintainer" is a volunteer position.  If you start
dictating too many things about what they must and must not do, you're
going to run short of willing volunteers.

I only maintain a few ports, but I'd quit maintaining those if someone
were to tell I had to reconfigure my mailserver.

-- 
Bill Moran
Collaborative Fusion Inc.