LISTSERV

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This article is about a specific electronic mailing list software application known as LISTSERV. See electronic mailing list for description of the generic email-based mailing lists.

LISTSERV is the first electronic mailing list software application, originally developed in 1984 by Ira Fuchs, Daniel Oberst, and Ricky Hernandez, of EDUCAUSE, for the Bitnet computer network. It quickly became a key service on that network. An updated version, originally called Revised Listserv, was issued by Eric Thomas in 1986. Later it was ported to a variety of platforms and taken up by the Internet community. By the year 2000, LISTSERV was assisting more than 30 million users by transmitting more than 20 million messages per day.[1]

The word "listserv" is now often used as a generic term for any email-based mailing list application of that kind. L-Soft international, Inc. has a registered trademark for the term, and argues that it is not legal to use the term commercially except in reference to the L-Soft product; using the word in the generic sense is not a trademark infringement, but does contribute to trademark genericide. The standard generic terms are electronic mailing list or email list.

1 Security
2 Editions
3 Supported Operating Systems
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Security

LISTSERV relies heavily on the security of the host system. As of version 15.0 (November 2006), individual user passwords are stored cleartext and available to users who are listed as Site Managers or "Postmasters" in the application configuration. Care should be exercised by both Site Managers and List Owners as to the configuration of their lists, particularly the "Send" and "Review" options.

[edit] Editions

LISTSERV is available in several variants. The standard version of LISTSERV is sometimes referred to as LISTSERV Classic. A version with a reduced feature set and reduced performance is available called Listserv Lite, and a free variant of this for non-commercial use is called LISTSERV Free Edition. Additional variants include LISTSERV HPO (high performance option), and LISTSERV Maestro (for customized and targeted email publishing and reporting).