From: Michael McLay <mclay@nist.gov>
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1998 17:07:49 -0400 (EDT)
To: From: Linux Weekly News <lwn@rdnzl.eklektix.com>
Subject: Mailman


Hmm, I guess Ken didn't get the word that we've dropped the Python
Stealth Marketing Campaign in favor of telling all of our fiends about
cool new python releases.  Ken's the current maintainer of Mailman.
He sent the following message to the python list-owners mailing list
but he didn't cross post to comp.lang.python.announce.  Since Ken
won't be back in the office until next Monday I'll pass on the scoop
to the fine folks at LWN so you can break the story:-)  Something for
your daily updates perhaps?

Ken Manheimer writes:
 > I'm going to be out of touch with the computer world for a week (just
 > after releasing a new version of mailman, in the grand old python
 > tradition), so i'm hoping you all have gotten comfortable with your
 > maillists, things do seem to be sailing along fairly smoothly.  I may
 > get a chance to login tomorrow - please let me know if you have any
 > questions or pending problems i can look at before then...
 > 
 > Ken Manheimer		  klm@python.org	    703 620-8990 x268
 > 	    (orporation for National Research |nitiatives
 > 
 > 		   # Thanks for joining the PSA!  #
 > 		    # http://www.python.org/psa/ #


Mailman can be retreived from:
   ftp://ftp.python.org/pub/python/contrib/Network/mailman

Here's the blurb on Mailman from the README file.

  This is mailman v1.0b2.0 - probably the first real, full-function
  beta-level release of V1.  Mailman is a maillist management system
  with full web-based administration and membership interfaces.  It is
  written almost wholly in Python, and nicely extensible.  See the
  README in the mailman directory for more details.

Ken writes, "I'd say this release, if not ready for prime time,
is ready for general use and development."

Having maintained a Majordomo site with about twenty lists, each with
their own set of perculiarities, I have to say that Mailman has
learned alot from Majordomo and has moved the bar up sevral notches.  The
web based administration interface of Mailman makes list
administration no-brainer.  It is easy enough that you could have a
secretary manage the list and dispose of the spam.