SUMMARY Unix list-servers

From: John Lyman (lyman@inference.com)
Date: Thu Jun 13 1991 - 11:33:39 CDT


A few day back, I posted the question:

    Would someone please give me a pointer to where I can find a good list
    server to handle mail list subscriptions for both internal and
    external mail routing.

I received many replies, of which all but one were requests for a
summary. I find it somewhat difficult to summarize a single response,
but here it is:

    From: steve@umiacs.UMD.EDU (Steve D. Miller)

       I know that Chris Meyers (chris@wugate.wustl.edu) has done a LISTSERV clone,
    and from what I've seen it's pretty reasonable. I don't know whether it's
    in distributable form yet.

       You might also want to get my ``distribute'' program, at least if you're
    going to run any large mailing lists. Distribute doesn't deal with
    subscriptions, but it does take several steps (e.g., hacking headers
    correctly and checking for gross header errors) that can really save your
    sanity. If you want this, ftp to ftp.umiacs.umd.edu and grab
    pub/distribute.tar.Z.

                    -Steve

I have pulled Steve's code and reviewed it. As far as I can tell, it
looks pretty good, and is very straightforward in what it does.
Furthermore, it is easily customizable, assuming you don't mind
hacking `c` code. I have not as of yet used it or even installed it.

The missing item in the mail list management process as I see it, is
some sort of automagic to support the maintenance of the physical
mailing list. Not having gotten any replies from this list, I sent
the same query to the maintainers of a number of other lists, also got
no reply.

So, I am off to hack up a shell script to do it, which I plan to use
in conjunction with Steve's distribute program.

I expect to have a working list manager sometime this weekend. When I
feel it is ready for testing, I will post a notice to this mail list,
and all of those of you who are interested in it, can give it a shot.

-- 
-John
 lyman@Inference.COM



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