GNU Mailman is the most popular free software mailing list manager, and probably the most configurable; however, it normally requires you have a web and mail server always connected to the Internet. With a little extra work, you can run Mailman from your intermittently-connected GNU/Linux desktop.
Introduction
Normally Mailman's workflow looks like figure 1. A mail server receives email, gives it to Mailman for processing, takes it back from Mailman, and delivers the email to the final recipients. The desktop Mailman workflow adjustments (see figure 2) add a few extra steps: mail is forwarded to, stored in, and downloaded from a mailbox before being received by a desktop mail server. These extra three steps are easy to setup, and this article integrates them into the normal Mailman setup procedure.