Hello,
Both, majordomo and SmartList, are decent mail list administration
packages (*). I am trying to make an objective comparison between the
two. Some people will have already done so and may want to share
experience. I also believe this is something interesting many readers.
To my knowledge (until proven wrong) there is no such comparison
available to date. Please email me and I will summarize (But please no
flames against the non favoured package). More precisely I would like to
find out about similarities and dissimilarities and resulting pros and
cons.
What I have found out until now (feel free to correct me):
- Similarities:
Both use a "wrapper" (wrapper and flist) that should be installed suid
root (in order to change to the uid/gid of the list owner) and is called
using aliases with the list name.
There exists the notion of a central maintainer (Majordomo-Owner and ?)
as well as a per list maintainer (list-Owner and ?).
Automatic (un)subscribtion and remote maintainance
Both allow for digesting and archiving.
- Disimilarities and Pros/Cons
SmartList only uses list and list-request in the aliases database.
Information about the central/per list maintainer is handled internaly
(and allows for none).
Majordomo allows for multiple "commands" per mail (e.g. info requests).
SmartList only works with procmail (as it really is an add-on). Thus
procmail is required, but also provides a robust environment.
SmartList/procmail is written in (clean ?) C, while Majordomo (C and
perl) needs a general face-lifting (some parts are more or less in a
patched-like condition).
SmartList is highly customisable (and can be better understood). It
could even simulate Majordomo behaviour.
Majordomo is a defacto standard. SmartList is not well known.
Unknown:
- Needed resources (fs space, run time performance & memory consumption)
(*) the (comercial) LISTSERV is not considered here.
Best Regards,
Axel Thimm.
--
Axel Thimm thimm@physik.fu-berlin.de thimm@ifh.de
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