Mailman mailing list software upgraded to version 2.1.20; Mailman 3 status

The authors of the Mailman mailing list software we provide for customers have recently released versions 2.1.19 and 2.1.20 to fix several bugs.

We’ve upgraded the Mailman software on our servers from version 2.1.18 to 2.1.20 as a result.

Users of Mailman lists shouldn’t notice any changes, but as always, don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or see any problems.

What about Mailman 3?

We’ve also been asked when we’ll start using the new Mailman version 3.

The short answer is “not in the near future”, unfortunately. We intentionally move slowly on new software like this. Mailman 3 was completely rewritten from scratch, and will be effectively like changing to completely different list software.

The Mailman 3 page itself says “We do not guarantee that it will work well for migrations and upgrades of Mailman 2.x […] It is not yet at full feature parity with Mailman 2.x, but we’re working on that for 3.1.”

So Mailman 3 is still a work in progress, not something that’s been well-tested and ready for wide deployment (even the Mailman site itself doesn’t use it yet). The Mailman authors are continuing to develop, improve and fix the 2.1 series in the meantime, so that’s what we’re still using. We’ll monitor the progress of Mailman 3 and switch when we’re convinced that it won’t negatively affect our customers.