Mailman - The GNU Mailing List Management System Copyright (C) 1998-2004 by the Free Software Foundation, Inc. 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA INTRODUCTION This is GNU Mailman, a mailing list management system distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). The name of this software is spelled "Mailman" with a leading capital `M' but with a lower case second `m'. Any other spelling is incorrect. Mailman is written primarily in Python, a free object-oriented scripting language. There is some ANSI C code for security purposes. Mailman was originally developed by John Viega. Subsequent development (through version 1.0b3) was by Ken Manheimer. Further work towards the 1.0 final release was a group effort, with the core contributors being: Barry Warsaw, Ken Manheimer, Scott Cotton, Harald Meland, and John Viega. Version 1.0 and beyond have been primarily maintained by Barry Warsaw with contributions from many; see the ACKNOWLEDGMENTS file for details. Jeremy Hylton helped considerably with the Pipermail code in Mailman 2.0. The Mailman home page is: http://www.list.org with mirrors at: http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman http://mailman.sf.net Mailman 2.1 requires Python 2.3 or greater, which can be downloaded from: http://www.python.org It is recommended that you use Python 2.5.2, the latest release as of this writing (26-Feb-2008). Mailman 2.1 is not compatible with Python 2.2 or any earlier version. You will also need an ANSI C compiler to build both Python and Mailman; gcc (the GNU C compiler) works just fine. Mailman currently works only on GNU/Linux and other Unix-like operating systems (e.g. Solaris, *BSD, MacOSX, etc.). It does not run on Windows, although web and mail clients on any platform should be able to interact with Mailman just fine. See the INSTALL file for installation instructions. If you are upgrading from a previous version of Mailman, you need to read the UPGRADING file for important information. FEATURES Read the NEWS file for a list of changes since version 0.9. Read the TODO file for our (extensive) wish list. You can see Mailman 2.1 in action at: http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo Mailman has most of the standard features you'd expect in a mailing list manager, and more: - Web based list administration for nearly all tasks. Web based subscriptions and user configuration management. A customizable "home page" for each mailing list. - Privacy features such as moderation, open and closed list subscription policies, private membership rosters, and sender-based filters. - Automatic web based archiving built-in with support for private and public archives, and hooks for external archivers. - Per-user configuration optional digest delivery for either MIME-compliant or RFC 1153 style "plain text" digests. - Integrated mail/Usenet gateways. - Integrated auto-replies. - Majordomo-style email based commands. - Integrated bounce detection within an extensible framework. - Integrated spam detection, and MIME-based content filtering. - An extensible mail delivery pipeline. - Support for virtual domains. REQUIREMENTS The default mail delivery mechanism uses a direct SMTP connection to whatever mail transport agent you have running on port 25. You can thus use Mailman with any such MTA, however with certain MTAs (e.g. Exim and Postfix), Mailman will support thru-the-web creation and removal of mailing lists. Mailman works with any web server that supports CGI/1.1. The HTML it generates is quite pedestrian and stingy on the graphics so it should be friendly to most web browsers and network connections. You will need root access on the machine hosting your Mailman installation in order to complete some of the configuration steps. See the INSTALL file for details. Mailman's web and email user interface should be compatible with just about any mail reader or web browser, although a mail reader that is MIME aware will be a big help. You do not need Java, JavaScript, or any other fancy plugins. FOR MORE INFORMATION The online documentation can be found in file:doc/ in the directory in which you unpacked Mailman. Chris Kolar has made a list owner-oriented manual available from the following URL http://www.imsa.edu/~ckolar/mailman/ There are also several mailing lists that can be used as resources to help you get going with Mailman. Mailman-Users A list for users of Mailman, for posting questions or problems related to installation, use, etc. We'll try to keep the deep technical discussions off this list. http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Listowners This mailing list with a non-technical focus, specifically for discussions from the perspective of listowners and moderators who do not have "shell access" to the mailing list server where the Mailman software runs. http://listowner.org Mailman-Announce A read-only list for release announcements and other important news. http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-announce Mailman-Developers A list for those of you interested in helping develop Mailman 2's future direction. This list contains in-depth technical discussions. http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-developers Mailman-I18N A list for the discussion of the Mailman internationalization effort. Mailman 2.1 is fully multi-lingual. http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-i18n Mailman-Checkins A read-only list which is an adjunct to the Bazaar repository. You can stay on the bleeding edge of Mailman development by subscribing to this list. http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-checkins The Mailman project is coordinated on SourceForge at http://sf.net/projects/mailman You should use SourceForge to report bugs and to upload patches. Local Variables: mode: indented-text indent-tabs-mode: nil End: