apt confusion

[Ben Browning]

Kurt Granroth wrote:

> The qmail fatal flaw, in my mind, has nothing to do with its features 
> or configuration or the like.  It's flaw, rather, can be expressed in 
> three letters: DJB. 

You gotta admint, that's 2 letters more efficient than BIND ;)

> More subtly, though, is the affect on the qmail community.  I  abandoned
> qmail some years ago so I don't know if it's changed since  then, but
> back then, there was always an air of frustration  permeating the
> community.  DJB himself was very prickly and when  other people would
> answer questions, they often had to apologize for  either his attitude
> or his refusal to allow various things to happen.

I understand the frustration with his license, but I kind of understand
his refusal to muck with it and his refusal to allow others to
distribute mucked-with copies.

That said, the qmail community has taken over qmail. There are several
very well documented projects with qmail at the core- the BSD-preferred
qmailtoaster, qmailrocks, and lifewithqmail all come to mind. There are
numerous detailed books on the market.

Is qmail the easiest? Not by a long shot. Is it perfect? Nope, it has
some nasty flaws (SMTP-time user existence checking is my biggest gripe
there). Is it the most secure? I'd put my money on it.

Qmails power comes partly from its own merits (Maildirs, tiny
barely-privileged-enough programs) but mostly from its extensibility-
given an understanding of it (google "The big qmail picture") and some
programming savvy it is easy to drop replacements or additions inline.

On simple hosts that just need an outbound relay, I stick with exim
4(mostly because I am a debian guy). On my production servers where
power, performance, stability, and security are all of paramount
importance, I will use nothing else.

Just my 00000010,

~Ben
---
"Confession only helps if you actually feel bad for your actions.
For you, it would just be a really long boast."
	-Tara
http://www.emptiedout.com