Dan J. Bernstein has written ezmlm in C. It is written for speed and reliability even in the face of power loss and NFS. These features are augmented to a large extent by the ruggedness of the qmail (also by Dan) delivery mechanism (see qmail-command(8)).
ezmlm uses some routines and techniques that still are not frequently seen in many mailing list managers. For example, subscriber email addresses are stored in a hash so that searches require reading only, on average, 2% of the email addresses. ezmlm has a optional message archive, where messages are stored 100 per directory, again to allow more efficient storage and retrieval. Important files are written under a new name and, only when safely written, moved in place, to assure that crashes do not leave the list in an undefined state.
In addition, ezmlm has a number of new inventions. One of these is bounce detection, which generates an automatic warning containing information identifying the messages which have bounced, followed by a probe message to the email addresses for which mail has bounced. If the probe bounces, the address is unsubscribed. Thus, the system won't remove email addresses due to temporary bounces: it takes 12 days after the first bounce before a warning is sent, and another 12 days of bounces after the warning bounce before the probe message is set.
Another Dan J. Bernstein invention is the use of cryptographic cookies based on a timestamp, address, and action. These are used to assure that the user sending a request to subscribe or unsubscribe really controls the target address. It is also used to prevent forgery of warning or probe messages to make it exceedingly difficult to subvert the bounce detection mechanism to unsubscribe another user.