Majordomo
A majordomo is a person who speaks, makes arrangements, or takes charge for another. Typically, the term refers to the highest (major) person of a household (domūs or domicile) staff, a head servant who acts on behalf of the owner of a large or significant residence. Similar terms include castellan, concierge, chamberlain, seneschal, mayor of the palace, maître d'hôtel, head butler, and steward.
The term also refers, more informally, to someone who oversees the day-to-day responsibilities of a business enterprise.
Etymology
The origin is from maior domūs (Latin, "principal" and "house"), and it was borrowed into English from Spanish "mayordomo" or obsolete Italian "maiordomo". Also found as French "majordome", modern Italian "maggiordomo", Portuguese and Galician "mordomo", in Romanian and Catalan "majordom".
Examples in fiction
Examples of fictional majordomos would be Alfred Pennyworth from the Batman mythos, Jonathan Quayle Higgins III from the 1980s television series Magnum, P.I., Bib Fortuna from Return of the Jedi, Carson from the ITV series Downton Abbey, and Joseph from the soap opera Dynasty.
Majordomo (software)
Majordomo is a mailing list manager (MLM) developed by Brent Chapman of Great Circle Associates. It is written in Perl and works in conjunction with sendmail on UNIX and related operating systems. The name majordomo is derived from the Latin "major domus" meaning "master of the house"; in English, the word is used to refer to a large household's chief servant.
The current version of Majordomo is 1.94.5, released 19 January 2000.
The official website warns that it will not work with Perl versions 5.001 and 5.005_01 specifically. It recommends to use Perl 4.036 or the latest version available. Support for Perl 4.036 may not be kept for the future.
History
Majordomo has been in widespread use since 1992, predating the popularity of the web browser, in an era when many people had access to email but didn't have World Wide Web access. As a result, tasks such as subscribing and unsubscribing are only handled by sending mail messages.
There are front-ends, such as MajorCool, to provide a web interface. Many mailing lists still use Majordomo.
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