Chapter 6

Yahoo Groups

Yahoo offers free mailing lists as part of their Yahoo Groups service. The mailing 

list is run using proprietary software created by Yahoo and supports access 

through both e mail and a Web interface. Note that only Yahoo members can join 

the list, and the Web interface is obscured by numerous advertising screens. For 

more information see http://groups.yahoo.com.

Rolling Your Own

It's not hard to set up your own mailing list if you have a UNIX machine handy that can 

send and receive e mail. If you run qmail

3

 as your mail handler, then Ezmlm

4

 may be 

your answer. It allows users with normal e mail accounts to set up their own mailing 

lists. Alternately, if you run Sendmail (available at http://www.sendmail.org) then you 

might find the venerable Majordomo (see http://www.greatcircle.com/majordomo/)

meets your needs. Another popular package is GNU Mailman (see 

http://www.list.org), which works with both Sendmail and qmail. Of course, 

these are just a few of the more popular alternatives there are far too many 

mailing list packages to list here!

Managing the Source

As maintainer, you are solely responsible for the code in your module. A main 

tainer has to act as both an editor and a librarian. This section will describe 

solutions, both technological and social, to some of the most common problems 

you'll face managing the source code of your module.

Feeping Creaturism

All software, open source and closed, is vulnerable to a disease known as feeping

creaturism. Once referred to by the less frightening creeping featurism, a new 

name was devised to more effectively render its hideous properties. A project 

suffering from feeping creaturism will exhibit symptoms of wild growth new 

features sprouting from old at a wild rate. Typically the project will grow less stable 

with each passing release as new features create new bugs. A simple module thus 

afflicted becomes complex and finally moribund with features.

3. Written by Dan J. Bernstein and available at http://qmail.org. You can learn more about 

qmail by reading the excellent book The qmail Handbook by Dave Sill (Apress).

4. Also written by Dan J. Bernstein and available at http://ezmlm.org.

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