>Many universities are getting rid of mainframes. Some move their lists to
>another machine, but  in some cases there is no  other suitable mainframe
>in the university, while in others  local politics require the service to
>be physically  located "in our department"  and not "run by  the bozos at
>the XYZ dept" :-) LISTSERV isn't available for unix yet so people move to
>other products, which as you said aren't quite as comprehensive.
>
>  Eric
 
Actually, listserv is available for UNIX and has been for some time.
The UNIX version has a few features/commands not found in the mainframe
version, howver, in general it is not as full featured as it lacks the
more sophisticated database search facilities.  It is, I believe,
freeware, is written by Anastasios Kotsikonas, and is called
ListProcessor.  For the less sophisticated subscribers (which I
presume -- perhaps incorrectly -- is the typical subscriber) the UNIX
version is command for command identical to its big sister.
 
There are also a whole collection of other UNIX based mailing list
server programs that are used for mailing lists housed on UNIX
machines.  The one I'm most aware of is Majordomo which is written
entirely in PERL.
 
-- Rob Tanner