GNU Mailman

GNU Mailman
Mailman files
Developer(s)	Abhilash Raj [1]
Initial release	July 30, 1999;26 years ago (1999-07-30) [2]
Stable release	3: 3.3.10 [3] / 2024-10-01 [±] 2: 2.1.39 / 2021-12-13
Repository	gitlab.com/mailman
Written in	Mostly Python, some C
Operating system	Unix-like
Available in	Many languages
Type	Mailing list management software
License	3: GPL-3.0-or-later 2: GPL-2.0-or-later
Website	www.list.org

GNU Mailman is a computer software application from the GNU Project for managing electronic mailing lists. ^{[4] [5]} Mailman is coded primarily in Python and currently maintained by Abhilash Raj. ^[1] Mailman is free software, licensed under the GNU General Public License. ^[5]

History

A very early version of Mailman was written by John Viega while a graduate student, who then lost his copy of the source in a hard drive crash sometime around 1998. ^[6] Ken Manheimer at Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI), who was looking for a replacement for Majordomo, then took over development. When Manheimer left CNRI, Barry Warsaw took over. Mailman 3, the first major new version in over a decade, was released in April 2015. ^[7]

Web administration interface for GNU Mailman 2.1

Features

Mailman runs on most Unix-like systems, including Linux. Since Mailman 3.0 it has required Python-3.4 or newer. ^[8] It works with Unix-style mail servers, such as Exim, Postfix, Sendmail and qmail. Features include:

• A customizable publicly-accessible Web page for each mailing list.
• Web application for list administration, archiving of messages, spam filtering, etc. Separate interfaces are available for users (for self-administration), moderators (to accept/reject list posts), and administrators.
• Support for multiple administrators and moderators for each list.
• Per-list privacy features, such as closed-subscriptions, private archives, private membership rosters, and sender-based posting rules.
• Integrated bounce detection and automatic handling of bouncing addresses.
• Integrated spam filters
• Majordomo-style email based commands.
• Support for virtual domains.
• List archiving. The default archiver provided with Mailman 2 is Pipermail, ^[9] although other archivers can be used instead. The archiver for Mailman 3 is HyperKitty. ^[10]

See also

• Free and open-source software portal

• List of mailing list software
• Electronic mailing list

References

1. Warsaw, Barry (23 November 2017). "Time Stand Still". Mailman-Announce (Mailing list). Retrieved 5 September 2018.
2. Warsaw, Barry A. (30 July 1999). "Mailman 1.0". mailman-announce (Mailing list). Retrieved 2008-12-09.
3. "Mailman, the GNU Mailing List Manager". gnu.org. Retrieved 2025-02-01.
4. "freshmeat.net: Project details for GNU Mailman". Archived from the original on February 7, 2001. Retrieved 2009-02-11.
5. "Mailman, the GNU Mailing List Manager" . Retrieved 2009-02-11.
6. "MyMailmanRole — Myriadicity Dot" . Retrieved 2009-02-11.
7. "Mailman 3.0 to modernize mailing lists". lwn.net. 27 March 2015. Retrieved 15 October 2015.
8. "Getting started with GNU Mailman". mailman.readthedocs.org. Archived from the original on 13 October 2015. Retrieved 14 October 2015.
9. "Pipermail". amk.ca. Archived from the original on 13 February 2001. Retrieved 2 February 2017.
10. "Developer Resources". gnu.org. Retrieved 26 November 2015.

Further reading

Reviews

• Mailing List Management Made Easy

Other resources

• List Administrator's Guide
• "Mailman – An Extensible Mailing List Manager Using Python"; Ken Manheimer, Barry Warsaw, John Viega; presented at the 7th International Python Conference, Nov 10–13, 1998
• "Mailman: The GNU Mailing List Manager"; John Viega, Barry Warsaw, Ken Manheimer; presented at the 12th Usenix Systems Administration Conference (LISA '98), Dec 9, 1998
• GNU Mailman chapter in The Architecture of Open Source Applications Volume 2
• Barry Warsaw presentation on Mailman 3 at PyCon US 2012

External links

• Official website
• Mailman Documentation
• Mailman support mailing lists
• "GNU Mailman". Freecode .