''Sympa'' is a mailing list management (MLM) software. Its name, which is an acronym for ''Système de Multi-Postage Automatique'' (i.e. ''Automatic Mailing System'') also means "nice" ( friendly) in French. Sympa is

free and open-source software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term encompassing free ...

subject to the terms of the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...

(GPL).

Features

Sympa's features include bulk mailing, service messages, and web pages defined by templates, subscriber information stored in a

RDBMS A relational database (RDB) is a database based on the relational model of data, as proposed by E. F. Codd in 1970. A Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) is a type of database management system that stores data in a structured forma ...

, and an external antivirus plugin. Its web front-end offers a portal-like interface where the user can control all of their list subscriptions and administrative powers in one place (i.e. one site per user) while Mailman (prior to 3.0), for example creates one site per list. Data is stored in a relational database such as

MySQL MySQL () is an Open-source software, open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A rel ...

PostgreSQL PostgreSQL ( ) also known as Postgres, is a free and open-source software, free and open-source relational database management system (RDBMS) emphasizing extensibility and SQL compliance. PostgreSQL features transaction processing, transactions ...

, or

Oracle An oracle is a person or thing considered to provide insight, wise counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. If done through occultic means, it is a form of divination. Descript ...

; some configuration data is still held in text files, but the stated goal of the developers is to eventually hold as much configuration data as possible in the database as well. Sympa consists of at least five concurrent daemons communicating through the database or by placing files in spools: a main daemon accepting incoming mail and controlling the other processes, a bounce daemon managing incoming bounces, an archiver archiving outgoing mail, a task manager doing scheduled maintenance, and a bulk mailer doing the actual distribution of list messages to their recipients. The work of the main daemon can be split up into up to three parallel instances; for the bulk mailer, an arbitrary number of instances may be run in parallel. At least in theory, the bulk mailer processes can even be spread across a cluster of hosts. The architecture, combined with the use of a database table for buffering outgoing mail, makes Sympa well-suited for large and very large list environments handling millions of subscribers. Other features are: (a full list of features is available on the Sympa web site.) * high performance for huge lists ( > 700.000 subscribers) *

MIME A mime artist, or simply mime (from Greek language, Greek , , "imitator, actor"), is a person who uses ''mime'' (also called ''pantomime'' outside of Britain), the acting out of a story through body motions without the use of speech, as a the ...

-compatible * data provisioning using

LDAP The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP ) is an open, vendor-neutral, industry standard application protocol for accessing and maintaining distributed Directory service, directory information services over an Internet Protocol (IP) networ ...

SQL Structured Query Language (SQL) (pronounced ''S-Q-L''; or alternatively as "sequel") is a domain-specific language used to manage data, especially in a relational database management system (RDBMS). It is particularly useful in handling s ...

or other data sources * various authentication method (SSO, LDAP, X.509) * benefit of

S/MIME S/MIME (Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) is a standard for public-key encryption and signing of MIME data. S/MIME is on an IETF standards track and defined in a number of documents, most importantly . It was originally developed by ...

and

DKIM DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) is an email authentication method that permits a person, role, or organization that owns the signing domain to claim some responsibility for a message by associating the domain with the message. The receiver c ...

* internationalized * web archive with access control, message removal, etc. * multi-domain server designed for service providers. * sophisticated automatic bounce management * automatic service message and web interface customizable *

SOAP Soap is a salt (chemistry), salt of a fatty acid (sometimes other carboxylic acids) used for cleaning and lubricating products as well as other applications. In a domestic setting, soaps, specifically "toilet soaps", are surfactants usually u ...

interface for integration with other applications

History

Sympa development began in 1995 and it was first released in 1997. Its initial goal was to ensure continuity with the TULP list manager, produced partly by the initial author of Sympa, Christophe Wolfhugel. The first version of Sympa included authentication, flexible command management, high performance in internal data access, and object-oriented code for easy code maintenance. Since 2011, Sympa development has been handled by RENATER. Since 2017, Sympa development has been done by The Sympa Community.

Adoption

Among the customers adopting Sympa are the universities in

Edinburgh Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. The city is located in southeast Scotland and is bounded to the north by the Firth of Forth and to the south by the Pentland Hills. Edinburgh ...

and

Glasgow Glasgow is the Cities of Scotland, most populous city in Scotland, located on the banks of the River Clyde in Strathclyde, west central Scotland. It is the List of cities in the United Kingdom, third-most-populous city in the United Kingdom ...

References

External links

* {{Official website, https://www.sympa.community/ Free mailing list software Free email software Mailing list software for Linux Free software programmed in Perl Email marketing software

Features

History

Adoption

See also

References

External links