On 11/19/2014 01:09 AM, Stephane Tougard wrote:
> I do not even imagine my life without procmail, I use it since 20 years,
> it's kind of basic Unix tool, documented and used everywhere ...
>
> Is it not possible to find a new upstream maintainer for such an
> important piece of art than just try to bury it ?
>
> I would do it if I was anything near good enough to do it (I'm not).
>
> Software is under GPL, have you tried to talk to the FSF, they may have
> a maintainer ?
Sieve and other alternatives exist, and are actively maintained.
That said, a long time ago someone told me "it doesn't matter if you're
any good at programming, if you care about [the project], learn and take
it on." Having started from nowhere and come a very long way to be a
fluent programmer in many languages and on many platforms (both
POSIX-like and not), I have to say that this was good advice.
If you have a passion for the software, take it up. It doesn't much
matter what language it is in, and procmail targets the POSIX and
workalike family of operating systems, which of course is the underlying
family for OpenBSD as well.
To anyone on this list thinking the same thing: Invest some time and
learn. If you don't think you're any good, that's actually great. It
is far better than thinking you're the king of the world and falling
short of that, honestly. As long as you have a good work ethic and care
about what you do, take pride in your work and care more about quality
than quantity, you'll go pretty far.
All programmers come from beginnings of ignorance. This is not just
programmers: system administrators, auto mechanics, and virtually any
other field requires an investment of time in order to procure
experience, and experience makes us better in our ventures. So, don't
just say "I'm not good enough," unless that's good enough for you. :-)
So, it gets dropped for now. I agree that it should. But to anyone who
feels it is very important to them, it can be brought back to life with
an individual or a group that is devoted to the task. Realize that you
will make mistakes, and that other people will come to you for help or
fixes. If you've only got a limited amount of time to give to it,
that's fine, too. After all, everyone has to eat.
But, if you cannot spend the time to learn how to maintain and enhance
procmail, that's OK, too. You may need to spend some time learning how
to use an alternative, but maybe that's a good thing.
I can say that I've used both procmail and sieve, and I much prefer the
latter. There are other MDAs out there which perform filtering and
management tasks as well.
--- Mike
--
Michael B. Trausch Fortified Tech Systems LLC
P: (404) 692-6078 or (844) GR8-TECH (Toll Free)
http://www.fortifiedtechsystems.com/
