sendmail

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sendmail - Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (26 May 2007) :

  sendmail
  
     <messaging> The BSD Unix Message Transfer Agent supporting
     mail transport via TCP/IP using SMTP.  Sendmail is
     normally invoked in the background via a Mail User Agent
     such as the mail command.
  
     Sendmail was written by Eric Allman at the University of California at Berkeley
      during the late 1970s.  He now has his
     own company, Sendmail Inc.
  
     Sendmail was one of the first programs to route messages
     between networks and today is still the dominant e-mail
     transfer software.  It thrived despite the awkward ARPAnet
     transition between NCP to TCP protocols in the early 1980s
     and the adoption of the new SMTP Simple Mail Transport
     Protocol, all of which made the business of mail routing a
     complex challenge of backward and forward compatibility for
     several years.  There are now over one million copies of
     Sendmail installed, representing over 75% of all Internet mail
     servers.
  
     Simultaneously with the announcement of the company in
     November 1997, Sendmail 8.9 was launched, featuring new tools
     designed to limit junk e-mail.  SendMail 8.9 is still
     distributed as source code with the rights to modify and
     distribute.
  
     Latest version: 8.9.1, as of 1998-08-25.
  
     The command
  
     	sendmail -bv ADDRESS
  
     can be used to learn what the local mail system thinks of
     ADDRESS.  You can also talk to the Sendmail daemon on a
     remote host FOO with the command
  
     	telnet FOO 25
  
     (1998-08-25)