Preface
*******


About Cyrus
===========

Prior to 1994, *Carnegie Mellon University* (CMU) exclusively used the
locally-developed and non-standard *Andrew Messaging System* (AMS) to
service its email communication needs. When, in 1994, CMU wanted to
move to a better scalable, standards-compliant mail system that met or
exceeded the feature set of AMS, it started the Cyrus project.

Cyrus IMAP is named after Cyrus The Great (559 - 530 B.C.) who founded
the Persian kingdom. Cyrus the Great also founded the world's first
modern postal system whose motto was: "stopped by neither snow, rain,
heat or gloom of night". The Pony Express was based on the Persian
system and later the United States Postal Service adopted the slightly
modified version of the Persian motto as their own.

At the time of this writing, Cyrus IMAP and Cyrus SASL are amongst the
most widely used Free Software products. The largest mail environment
reported to run on Cyrus IMAP services over 2.3 million users. A large
group of project supporters sustain the continued development of the
Cyrus software.
