[Mailman-Users] your software

[Barry A. Warsaw]

>>>>> "MM" == Marc MERLIN <marc_news at vasoftware.com> writes:

    MM> Barry has made the choice to call the project he maintains
    MM> "Mailman, the GNU Mailing List Manager"
    MM> That's his right, it's his software

Just a minor correction, because I agree with Marc that in general,
this kind of discussion is off-topic for this list.

John Viega invented Mailman back in oh, 1997 or so (my earliest email
on the subject is circa mid-97).  At the time it wasn't even called
Mailman -- I don't think John had a name for it.  Because it was
written in Python and because we were so frustrated with Majordomo, we
adopted it for the sigs on python.org.  John originally had a very
simple and very liberal license.

As the s/w developed, there was some discussion about what to call it,
and how to license it.  I believed at the time that the GPL was the
best license to choose, and that we could increase its visibility,
publicity, and popularity by positioning it within the GNU project.
The GPL isn't right for everything (e.g. I think it would be fatally
wrong for Python itself to ever be GPL'd), but it's perfect for
Mailman.  Ultimately, it was John's decision, but I did lobby for that
outcome, and I think I was right about how the GNU project would help
Mailman get to where it is today.  For that reason, I have no problem
calling it "GNU Mailman" where pressed to be precise.

sleepi-ly,
-Barry