Quoting Martin Steigerwald (martin@???):

> AFAIK there are some smaller alternatives available, especially in case
> no web interface is needed. I do not recall the actual names. I do not
> recall the names currently. Sympa could be somewhat heavyweight as well.
>
> Ah, I found it: smartlist. It appears to be a small, lightweight C
> application. Debian is using this.

Nicely summarised. Yes, SmartList seems to have carved out a neat
little niche of modest functionality. It's built atop Procmail, and
FWIW strikes me as having at best modest adoption. Just as in olden
days (1990s) of majordomo hegemony, people asking if there's an
integrated Web archiver are pointed at MHonArc. As with majordomo, GNU
Mailman, and Sympa, people asking if there's an integrated search feature
are given a shrug and a couple of vague pointers. (That is not a
criticism of any of the projects named, just a wry observation about
how some things don't change.)

Noted without comment: The (only barely active) SmartList software
mailing list runs on Mailman.

Also, am guessing from https://sources.debian.org/src/smartlist/ that
it's been orphaned upstream since 2000, which would be unsurprising
because that's also true of Procmail.[1]

I'd also confidently wager that the likelihood of SmartList being able
to address modern issues like VERP and DMARC-mitigation is zero.
(https://www.w3.org/2004/10/smartlist.html suggests there is no VERP
support, at least as of 2004.)

Personal opinion: Much as I'd love for there to be good choices of
small, fast MLMs (mailing list managers), the only credible choices in
2018 are Mailman and Sympa. Of those two, I'd use Sympa _only_ if
forced to by (large) scale, as it's ponderous and database-backed.


[1] It doesn't bother me that Procmail is effectively maintainerless,
because it's modest in scope and has no significant problems. This
is never true of any MLM.