Could it be? Mailman 3.0

For those who have used electronic mailing lists , there are many commercial and open source mailing list manager (MLM) projects out there.  One favourite for many not-for-profits is called mailman.  Its simple, stable and is actively maintained. 

Recently I learned that the maintainer, Barry Warsaw, has been working on a new version known as mailman 3.0 - http://wiki.list.org/display/DEV/Mailman+3.0

This is an incredibly significant development because its being specifically designed to be integrated into content management systems like Plone, Drupal, Joomla, Moodle etc.  by storing mailman data into a real database layer.  As Barry states on the mailman 3.0 site :

“Many things that people have been wanting for years will be addressed, most notably a unified user database, true virtual domain support, and backing the Mailman data in a real database layer. From a development perspective, we will be adopting a very strict test-driven development model, utilizing modern Python technology and coding styles. The focus will be on providing core Mailman as a library for easy integration into other frameworks and sites, while continuing the tradition of providing a turnkey solution with all the necessary parts, making it even easier to download, install, and go.”

Moreover, once released, I see no reason why others can’t mashup this system further to build an open source google groups or  next generation twitter for groups similar to twingr.   

I’ve talked to members of the Drupal community who are interested to get involved.  It will be interesting to see where this goes once released.  In the mean time, I commend Barry Warsaw for taking on this very much volunteer project.

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