Majordomo (software)

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Majordomo
Developed by	Brent Chapman
Latest release	1.94.5 / January 19, 2000 (2000-01-19); 3066 days ago
Written in	Perl
OS	Unix
Development status	Mature
Genre	Mailing lists
Website	http://www.greatcircle.com/majordomo/

Majordomo is a mailing list manager (MLM) developed by Brent Chapman of Great Circle Associates. It is written in Perl and works in conjunction with sendmail on UNIX and related operating systems. It came into widespread use since 1992, predating the popularity of the web browser, in an era when many people did have access to email but still didn't have WWW access. As a result, tasks such as subscribing and unsubscribing are handled by sending mail messages, a process that may seem cumbersome today.

There are front-ends, such as MajorCool, to provide a web interface. Many mailing lists still use 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 coding effort 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. Other open-source mailing list software that gained popularity in recent years are GNU Mailman and PHPlist. There is mailing list software that works with qmail, ezmlm (and the improved version, ezmlm-idx).

The current version of Majordomo is 1.94.5, released Jan. 19, 2000.

[edit] Licensing

Majordomo is community-supported free software, however, the license says "No part of Majordomo may be incorporated into any program or other product that is sold, or for which any revenue is received without written permission of Great Circle Associates". There are a few exceptions listed in the license to this: "You may install Majordomo at your site and run mailing lists for other (sic) using it, and charge for that service. You may install Majordomo at other sites, and charge for your time to install, configure, customize, and manage it. You may charge for enhancements you've made to the Majordomo software, subject to the distribution restrictions listed [in the license]. You may not charge for the Majordomo software itself."