[Mailman-Users] Looking for information on stability of Mailman

[Brad Knowles]

At 5:44 PM -0800 2005-01-09, Bill Bruns-Yahoo wrote:

>  I am looking for information about the stability of Mailman,

	It's about as stable as any other mailing list management system 
that I've seen in the twelve or so years I've been specializing in 
doing Internet mail systems administration.  It's about as stable as 
any other GNU project I've ever known, and keep in mind that most 
hardware/OS vendors don't bother to develop their own compilers any 
more and choose to use gcc (the GNU C Compiler) instead.

	If you're using Linux, then you should already know about the 
stability of most GNU projects.  Mailman should be in that same 
ballpark, with regards to stability.


	The one issue with Mailman is that it is not a commercial 
program, and there is no commercial support available for it.  If you 
need that, then you need to look elsewhere.

	Unless you want to provide full-time employment to Barry Warsaw 
for all your necessary support, that is.

>                                                               especially
>  since there are quite a few problems reported on this list.

	Of course, you're going to see a lot of complaints here about it. 
This is where people come to get help to solve their problems, and if 
they're not having any problems, they're unlikely to post much of 
anything here.

>  Also about the minimum system requirements to run it.

	See <http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=show&file=faq01.024.htp>

>  Alternatively, if you could suggest a different mail list manager, that
>  would be useful also.

	You could always try Listserv, but that's pretty expensive.  Even 
people with large mailing lists (hundreds of thousands of recipients) 
usually choose to use something else, primarily due to the cost.

	Once you're over the level of hundreds of thousands of 
recipients, there aren't many programs left that can handle that kind 
of load, so you might have no other choice but to use Listserv.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad at stop.mail-abuse.org>

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

     -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
     Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755

   SAGE member since 1995.  See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.