Tasos Kotsikonas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>With so much volume of email going out we need to cut down on the
>number of bounces. As we expect megabytes of bounces each day coming
>back from each such list, we need to keep our lists as clean as
>possible. Nothing else other than DSNs will allow us to be 100%
>successful.
VERP's are more effective than DSN's. And *nothing* will be 100%
successful.
>I am well aware that installing MTAs that do DSNs does not
>necessarily mean that we will not be getting non-DSN bounces back.
Does the DSN-ness of the sending MTA affect the DSN-ness of bounces
from remote MTA's at all? How?
>In fact, our bounce handling code resolves about 99.2% of them (on a
>test of half a million random bounces). But we need to cut down on
>the processing time parsing non-DSN bounces, and indeed DSNs are very
>easy to parse with linear algorithms or better.
As are VERP bounces.
>For enterprise-level delivery needs qmail in its current form does
>not cut it for us.
How, exactly and specifically, does it fail?
>I am not sure where Dan stands on DSNs (although I gather he just
>agree it's the right thing?),
Certainly not. See for DJB on DSN's:
http://www.ornl.gov/its/archives/mailing-lists/qmail/1996/12/msg00037.html
http://www.ornl.gov/its/archives/mailing-lists/qmail/1998/03/msg00451.html
http://www.ornl.gov/its/archives/mailing-lists/qmail/1998/03/msg00521.html
ftp://koobera.math.uic.edu/www/proto/qsbmf.txt
>and all I can say is that he would have been a millionaire by now
>with the right product for business and a good business strategy.
Mail is one of Dan's passions, not his livelihood.
>You know, despite what we all think of freeware sendmail, they did
>get $6mil in VC funding,
So what? Microsoft sells billions of dollars worth of software every
year, and if you distilled out all the crap you'd be left with a pile
of quality software much less impressive than Dan's singlehanded
output. One can, to some extent, choose whether to produce quality
software or marketable software, but the same product is rarely both
high quality *and* marketable. The market is too competitive and the
sheeple don't care enough about quality. Microsoft proves that. Also,
customers demand more and more features, and are either willing to
accept the resultant bloat and complexity or aren't aware of it.
Dan is able to keep qmail secure, small, reliable, and efficient
because he has no customers, stockholders and investors to please.
>they do have a high speed version of the product (of unknown as yet
>performance capabilities), they will be successful in converting
>large-scale operations using freeware sendmail like AOL.COM (e.g. see
>205.188.156.161), and they are in the process of rewriting their
>product.
Whoop de do. Buy Sendmail stock if that impresses you.
>My apologies to all of you who thought I was trying to stir up the
>waters here. But the similarity of responses I got re: qmail was
>very striking and the message was: use qmail but if your business
>depends on it and you need to get something done by the author, well,
>good luck! That's a chance we cannot afford to take.
That's silly. qmail source is free and there are people very familiar
with the code who will be happy to make it sing and dance for you. But
you *could* afford to be at the mercy of Sendmail, Inc., should they
fail to provide a bug fix or feature you request?
>We may have a need for advisors should we decide to write our own
>SMTP delivery engine.
Good luck. I think you'll find it's a wee but harder than writing your
own MLM.
-Dave
