At 08:56 AM 5/12/98 -0400, you wrote:
>On Tue, May 12, 1998 at 08:18:16AM -0400, Matthew Soffen wrote:
>> You may wish to take a look at a sendmail replacement package
>> called qMail (http://www.qmail.org/). It has a lot more features
>> than sendmail (and is much more secure). (ie. built in mailing
>> lists, mailing lists by anyone, safe even over NFS, and much more).
>
>Qmail has its problems, too, not the least of which is that its designer
>has mistakenly integrated the functionality of mailing lists into
>what should be purely a mail transport agent. It is NOT the Unix Way
>to combine clearly separate functions into a single program. Those who
>choose to do so need to be spanked with a copy of the "The Unix Programming
>Environment" by Kernighan and Thompson, an oldie but goodie which explains
>why things are done as they are in the Unix world.
Then by that logic, Eric Allman should be spanked. It is a
monolithic program that runs as root doing all the aspects of
receiving mail and sending it. While qmail is many small
programs that run as a non-root, minimal privileged user each
performing a specific task.
>Not to mention that its principal designer, Dan Bernstein, while a
>reasonably competent programmer, has turned out to be a complete jerk
>who spends time in comp.mail.sendmail insulting and baiting sendmail's
>author (Eric Allman) -- someone whose contributions to the Internet
>as well as the Berkeley Unix project dwarf his own.
Well.. I don't know much about Eric Allman. All I can say is
that I will never use Sendmail again. After having a person use
my mail server as a spam relay I changed to qmail. Qmail is much
better in the simple fact that "right out of the box" it denies
relaying. Sendmail by design is wide open.
>So, quite honestly, whatever technical merits qmail has -- and there are
>a few -- are outweighed by its shortcomings and the assinine attitude of
>its principal architect.
So you condemn the entire program (which you just admitted has
merits) because you dislike the designer of it ?
Matt Soffen
==============================================
Boss - "My boss says we need some eunuch programmers."
Dilbert - "I think he means UNIX and I already know UNIX."
Boss - "Well, if the company nurse comes by, tell her I said
never mind."
- Dilbert -
==============================================
____________________________________________________________________
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Join The Web Consultants Association : Register on our web site Now
Web Consultants Web Site : http://just4u.com/webconsultants
If you lose the instructions All subscription/unsubscribing can be done
directly from our website for all our lists.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
