[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>On Tue, 29 Dec 1998, Dave Sill wrote:
>
>> I'm sure there are others, but you get the idea. From Red Hat's point
>> of view, the inertia behind sendmail is substantial and the mere
>> availability of a superior alternative isn't compelling enough to make
>> them switch.
>
>That is misleading. The reason RH is not including Qmail is simply
>because of Qmail's restrictive's licensing. RH does not want to have its
>hands tied, and a portion of their distribution controlled by an outside
>party.
OK, so why hasn't Red Hat switched to one of the other
better-than-sendmail MTA's such as exim?
>Put yourself in their place. They are bringing together almost a thousand
>different software packages into one functional operating system. If
>someone tells you that the only way you can use package X would be if you
>were forced to package it only in a certain way, and afterwards you will
>have to go back to him every time you had to make any tweak, no matter how
>minor it is?
Put yourself in Dan's place. His name is associated with qmail, he has
to support it, and his reputation is on the line if Red Hat or anyone
else distributes a modified version that's broken. If someone tells
you that the only way they'll use your software is if you'll let them
modify it whenever and however they want to, and afterwords you'll
have to support their changes, no matter how silly or contrary to your
desires? Well, you can't answer that because it's a sentence fragment,
but you get the point, I hope.
I wonder if Red Hat or any other freeOS "vendor" has tried to
negotiate a contract with Dan that specifies terms that would allow
them to generate and distribute emergency patches within a certain
time limit if Dan didn't provide official patches? Or perhaps the
right to distribute modified qmail-based source code under the
vendor's trademark provided the vendor agrees to support their version
and not mention Dan or qmail anywhere, except perhaps in copyright
notices?
>Not when they have a functional MTA available, that doesn't come with any
>strings attached, that quietly installs itself, non-relaying out of the
>box, and will even do certain things that Qmail cannot do,
Exactly what I've been saying. Inertia is a major factor.
>... There's absolutely no reason for Red Hat to switch to Qmail, so
>let's just stop beating a dead horse.
That's not true. There *are* good reasons to switch to qmail. They're
just not sufficient to overcome the inertia and the reasons *not* to
switch to qmail.
And it's "qmail", dammit, not "Qmail". :-)
-Dave
