Majordomo (software)

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Majordomo is an open source mailing list manager (MLM) developed by Brent Chapman of Great Circle Associates. It works in conjunction with sendmail on UNIX and related operating systems. It came into widespread use beginning in 1992, predating the popularity of the web browser, in an era when many people had email access but no WWW access. As a result, tasks such as subscribing and unsubscribing are handled by sending mail messages, a process that seems cumbersome today.

There are front-ends, such as MajorCool, to provide a web interface. Many mailing lists are still run using majordomo. There is work being done to completely rewrite Majordomo with a focus on keeping the familiar email interface while greatly improving the web interface and other features. This rewrite is referred to as Majordomo 2 and is currently being used by the OpenBSD project among others.

Before Majordomo, mailing lists were maintained manually, with a list owner adding and removing participants by editing a text file. Most, however, moved to commercial mailing list hosting services, often with a stipend of $100 or more paid to the list owner by the hosting service in exchange for the transfer. Most of the hosting providers were subsequently bought out by Yahoo!, and merged into its Yahoo! Groups service.

A commercial product used during the same era is LISTSERV. Another open-source mailing list software that has gained popularity in recent years is GNU Mailman. The mailing list software that works with qmail, ezmlm (and the improved version, ezmlm-idx), is also used by some, even though it has its idiosyncrasies.