LISTSERV is the first electronic mailing list software application. Before its invention, all email lists had to be administered manually. LISTSERV was originally developed in 1984 by Ira Fuchs, Daniel Oberst, and Ricky Hernandez 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. The word listserv is now often used as a genericized trademark, referring to any email-based mailing list application of that kind. However, 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. The standard generic terms are electronic mailing list or email list.
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Security
LISTSERV relies heavily on the security of the host system. As of version 15.0, individual user passwords are stored cleartext and available to users who are listed as Site Managers or "Postmasters" in the application configuration. Beginning with version 15.5, this is no longer the case, and passwords are hashed by default.
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).
Supported operating systems
LISTSERV is currently available for and supported on Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, AIX, Mac OS X, OpenVMS, HP-UX, Tru64, VM and Microsoft Windows (XP, 2000, and 2003)
