email list hosting

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. Hosted email list services are the easiest and fastest way to get your email newsletters, discussion Hosted email list services are the easiest and fastest way to get your email newsletters. 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.