A mailing list has traditionally been something that a user had to either create manually or get permission from a super user to create. A user either had to use a mail-in interface or a complex Unix command line interface. Many of these programs were effective at making mailing lists, but most were lacking in certain areas, and their use was too complex for the novice Internet user.
For the OU mailer program described in this paper, concepts were combined from MajorDomo and the Purdue Mailer, and a GUI front end was added. The general user is more likely to use a application if it is free of cost and easy to use, which is why the front end was written in Java. In Java, it is easy to create a GUI interface that can run on many operating systems, without having to modify the code. The final product was a program that was both functional and secure, yet easy to use.