Benjamin Scott wrote:
>
> I was seriously looking at Courier for evaluation, but certain things in
> the FAQ turned me off. A lot of questions in the form of "X doesn't work"
> were answered with "X is broken, don't use it". In my world,
> interoperability is important. There are lots of broken things out there.
> My job often involves making them work together.
The FAQ is badly written, plain and simple. However, there are usually
workarounds for things that are badly implimented in clients. As a
matter of fact, there is a --use-workarounds-for-broken-imap-clients
switch for configure ;-) The workarounds usually include commenting
out a section of code that checks for something specific, like a
perticular RFC compliance check, etc.
> Put another way, I prefer the Robustness Principle: "Be liberal in what
> you accept, and conservative in what you send." (RFC-1122, section 1.2.2)
Courier can be made to be extrememly liberal. However, `out of the
box`, it is extremely strict. The reason for this is that the
developer believes in the reverse-Microsoft principal "If you *REALLY*
want that hole, I'll tell you how to do it, but *YOU* have to do it
yourself. I won't impliment bad practice by default".
> What I am leading up to is a question: Have people here using the Courier
> system had trouble interoperating with other systems? In particular, I
> worry about Microsoft's offerings -- notorious for anti-social behavior, but
> also very common.
I have had a few problems, but nothing insurmountable. The biggest
problem that I have had is other people either 1) not having proper
reverse dns for their mail servers, or 2) using IP addresses in their
MX records instead of host names.
As far as client interoperability, I haven't had any problems other
than trying to get users used to IMAP when they have been using POP3
for 10 years. LookOut seems to play nice (NOTE: LookOut can only use
an IMAP server in it's `Internet Only` configuration). The clients
that I know of that work are: LookOut, LookOut Express, Eudora,
Netscrape Mail (windows and Linux), and Evolution.
> I am interested in experiences -- positive, negative, or indifferent -- of
> people actually using Courier. (Or anyone not using it who has had
> interoperability issues with someone who was.)
Now that I have it set up the way that I want, and I have tweaked it
to be fairly liberal in what it accepts, it's working great. The one
major flaw that I have with it is the lack of a command line mailer,
which is probably just a matter of tying something to it.
C-Ya,
Kenny
--
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Kenneth E. Lussier
Geek by nature, Linux by choice
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