All this misinformation is really getting annoying. Here is a copy of my
standard reply to people who ask me for the unix version of my code,
which I already sent privately to the person who started this thread.
Eric
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First of all, this "canned" message was written in November 1992, and for
the sole purpose of saving time to its author by attempting to answer a
frequently asked question. The information it contains may be inaccurate
both because the author is not a cornucopia of Internet knowledge and
because of the intrinsically ephemeral nature of information in our
network. Corrections will be accepted, but complaints are best sent to
your local shredder.
In case you are not familiar with list servers, here is some background
information to help you understand the rest of this message. The name
LISTSERV comes from a popular mailing list manager used on BITNET. The
first version was written around 1984, maybe even earlier, if you find an
exact date please let me know. The current version was started in 1986
under the name "Revised LISTSERV", and users stopped saying "revised" a
couple years later as nobody was running the original code any longer.
This software only runs under VM; you may have heard otherwise from other
people, but that only means that there has been a misunderstanding
somewhere along the chain of information. Due to the unbelievable amount
of people who saw but then lost a posting by someone who swore he knows
where to find a fully-compatible port of the BITNET LISTSERV for unix, I
really must insist that this is incorrect information, and rather than
giving you a lame apology I will just suggest that you skip the rest of
this paragraph if you are already convinced. If not, well, the BITNET
LISTSERV is written in REXX, PASCAL and S/370 assembler, not C, and
totals about 60k lines of source code. If you find a full port that takes
200 lines of perl code, then by all means do introduce me to its author -
I have a job for him. As for people who claim they know someone who ran
the REXX, PASCAL and S/370 assembler code through a C converter and then
compiled it, they are probably quoting from something posted on April
1st. If you still think I am trying to hide something for fear that
people would stop using my software, let me add LISTSERV is not in the
public domain and thus any port based on compiling the source code on a
different machine without my explicit permission would be illegal, so it
really wouldn't be in my interest to claim that no such animal exists
when I could sue someone for copyright violation if it did.
As far as VMS is concerned, both PMDF and MX come with mailing list
managers which, while not as sophisticated as LISTSERV, can be good
enough in many cases. You will find newsgroups for both PMDF (commercial
product) and MX (free) in usenet under the vmsnet hierarchy. You might be
able to coerce POSIX into running one of the unix list managers, but I
disclaim any responsibility for any psychic disorder that might result
from such an attempt. My advice is to stick to what your mailer provides,
although you may want to give MX a try if you are using something else
and you are not satisfied with what it has to offer.
Now, there are scores of unix versions which claim to be ports of the
BITNET LISTSERV but do not even have compatible syntax and seldom exceed
a couple hundred lines of perl. There are 2-3 versions which stand
clearly above the rest of the crowd, in terms of life span if not
compatibility. Because I do NOT plan to update this FAQ every week, I am
not going to give you a list - I trust that you will be able to sort out
the 200-liners and find up-to-date information in usenet.
I do have a recommendation to make, though. As of this writing the most
robust and most functional unix list manager would seem to be Mailbase.
That alone makes it one of the 2-3 I mentioned above, but the reason I am
going to recommend it is that, unlike the others, it does not claim to be
a unix port of LISTSERV and makes it very clear to the users that they
are dealing with another piece of software with different syntax and this
considerably decreases the amount of bug reports and complaints I get
from confused users. Mailbase works with at least SunOS and you can
contact Jill Foster <[log in to unmask]> for more information. I
cannot guarantee that Mailbase will work in your environment or that the
people who funded its development will give you a copy on terms you can
accept; I am merely suggesting that, if I were in your situation, I would
try to get Mailbase rather than any of the programs which call themselves
'unix listserv version x.y' and do not even use the same command syntax.
One last reason for using Mailbase is, precisely, that I and many other
BITNET people resent the use of expressions such as 'unix port of the
bitnet listserv' on documentation, advertisements and sometimes each and
every mail header, when the software in question is not based on the
BITNET LISTSERV at all and in fact totally incompatible. Fortunately not
all unix list managers make these sorts of claims, but unfortunately none
of the people I kindly asked to use another name, or at least a less
ambiguous terminology, even considered the possibility to oblige me; in
the best cases I got a short rebuttal without any justification, in the
worst cases a stream of insults accompanied with feebleminded references
to the US constitution. I eventually gave up, but you will want to
consider the implications of passively endorsing this sort of attitude
before choosing one of the programs in question to run a highly-visible
service in your organization: there are many user-support people who know
how to present that case to academic management and may be unable to
resist their anger after wasting 10 minutes on a so-called unix port of
LISTSERV for the 5th time in the day.
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