Mercury MAISER 1.20

Section-Update: 2 Sep 1995

David Harris, who writes the free and extremely popular Pegasus mail system for DOS, Windows, and Mac systems on NetWare networks, also writes a free NetWare SMTP transport agent called Mercury. Mercury includes a simple but functional MLM, "MAISER." It's not meant as a high-end system, but if you want to run low- to moderate-activity mailing lists and already have a NetWare server on the Internet, you may like it.

Unusual features

Features for users

MAISER supports subscribe, unsubscribe, and review commands for lists (which can be moderated or not, closed or not, with posting restricted to list members or not), as well as file-archive index and get commands. It also supports a finger command to help track down users on the server's Pegasus Mail system. Notable new features in MAISER 1.20 include MIME-format digests, message archiving, and full anonymous mailing.

Features for administrators

Mailing lists and other information resources

The discussion list for both packages is PMAIL@UA1VM.UA.EDU; subscribe by sending "subscribe PMAIL Your Name" in the body of a message to LISTSERV@UA1VM.UA.EDU.

System requirements

Mercury runs as an NLM on a NetWare 3.x file server. It requires a "smart host" for final delivery of the mail (Mercury delivers only to the smart host).

Cost and licensing

Both Pegasus and Mercury are free software, but they are distributed as executables only (no source). David Harris makes his money selling manuals, though he does include decent on-line documentation with everything he writes.

How to get it

Get Pegasus and Mercury at ftp://risc.ua.edu/pub/network/pegasus/.