Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ncrlnk!ncrcae!hubcap!gatech!rutgers!apple!bionet!agate!ucbvax!TWG.COM!dcrocker
From: dcrocker@TWG.COM (Dave Crocker)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: EMail server alternative
Message-ID: <8811111609.AA17782@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 10 Nov 88 18:04:00 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 26

From what I have seen, this point has not been made to the general
community, so it may be worth mentioning, by way of closing the barn
door after the worm has turned (those of you familiar with Dave Farber will
recognize his linguistic influence...) that there is another mail transport
package available as an alternative to sendmail.

MMDF (which used to stand for Multi-channel Memo Distribution Facility and
may, still) has been in operation for 9 years and is used as the core to
a number of mail networks, most notably CSNet.  While I developed the original
version, at the University of Delaware for Farber, the Army, and NSF (CSNet),
the last 6 years has seen massive improvements made by a collection of 
people, originating with Doug Kingston, then of BRL, Steve Kille, still of
UCL, and Dan Long, still of BBN.  I am told that there is a small community
of dedicated souls continuing to maintain and enhance it.

Like sendmail, MMDF allows mail to be sent to processes.  Unlike sendmail,
this can only be done to pre-registered addresses or by the recipient.

That is, the MMDF maintainer can register an alias that maps to a process or
the mail recipient can have an arbitrary process invoked on the message
contents.

There are a number of other sercurity related features, such as filtering
mail according to network pairs, host pairs, or host/net combinations.

Dave