[282] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: What is LISTSERV
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (David Herron)
Mon Mar 4 23:10:00 1991
To: Steve Jay <shj@ultra.com>
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: Your message of Mon, 04 Mar 91 11:54:00 -0800.
Date: Mon, 04 Mar 91 19:46:35 -0800
From: David Herron <david@TWG.COM>
Capabilities of LISTSERV are something along the lines of (it's been over
a year since I've accessed one..):
-- Provides a way for end users to subscribe/unsubscribe automagically
and without bothering some human with the trivia. There are security
levels attached so that these transactions have to be done by an
administrator if desired.
-- Automagically distributes subscribers among a network of LISTSERVs.
The desired goal is so that each message traverses a wire only once,
much like Usenet's flood algorithm desires to keep a message from
traversing a wire multiple times.
It helps a lot that BITNET is (or used to be) (mostly) (speaking
in graph-ese for a moment) a tree. There were a few cycles, but by
and large it is a tree centered at CUNYVM.
-- Administrators can administer their LISTs via e-mail.. they have
a different security level and can subscribe/unsubscribe other addresses.
-- Provides a file storage area from which files can be retrieved,
again by e-mail.
-- Instead of e-mail these transactions can be done with interactive
messages (a BITNET/RSCS feature we simply don't have on the TCP/IP net).
-- There was something which kept a list of LISTSERV lists. Don't remember
if this was automagically kept or what.
-- Irritates the living daylights of E-mail people in the rest of
the Known Universe. Not sure if this is a bug or a feature though..
All the transactions mentioned above are sent to the ID "LISTSERV@host".
So instead of {,un}subscribing via list-request@list-host.dom.ain you
do it via LISTSERV@list-host.dom.ain. I'd be hard pressed to say
which is more obvious than the other ... for both you have to learn
that _convention_ says to do administrivia via some other address.
The other features (automagic administrivia & file storage and retrieval)
are kinda nice.
David
