As the number and size of mailing lists at your site become
large, you may wish to install a software package that automates
list management. All of the following packages are available via anonymous
FTP.
The Majordomo mailing-list management software was written by
Brent Chapman using
the perl(1) language. Its chief features
are that it allows users to subscribe to and remove themselves
from lists without list manager intervention and that it
allows list managers to manage lists remotely. In addition,
users can obtain help and list descriptions with simple mail requests.
Note that Majordomo aids in managing a list (the list addresses)
but does not aid in list moderation (the contents of mail messages).
Majordomo is available via anonymous FTP from:
ftp://FTP.GreatCircle.COM/pub/majordomo/
The Almanac mailing-list management software was written
at Oregon State University, Extension Service, in the C language.
It allows
users to subscribe to and be removed from
mailing lists themselves, without maintainer intervention, and also
services requests for file transfers (similar to FTP)
via email.
It is purported to be highly configurable in that the
grammar for requests is determined by the site administrator, and any
request can be bound to any (predefined) Bourne shell program.
For example, Almanac sites in France
are at liberty to speak French to
their Almanac server.
The Almanac software is available via anonymous FTP from:
ftp://OES.OrSt.EDU/pub/almanac/
The ListProcessor system was written by
Tasos Kotsikonas. It is an
automated system for managing mailing lists that replaces the aliases
file for that use.
According to the author, it includes support for "public and private
hierarchical archives, moderated lists, peer lists, peer servers,
private lists, address aliasing, news connections and gateways, mail
queueing, list ownership, owner preferences, crash recovery, and batch
processing." The system also accepts Internet connections
for "live" processing of requests at port 372
(as assigned by the IANA).
[5]
The ListProcessor system is available via anonymous ftp
from:
ftp://cs-ftp.bu.edu/pub/listserv
