Qmail license

Andrew Boothman andrew at mux.org.uk
Sun Mar 21 17:04:49 GMT 2004


Frank Shute wrote:

>>I use Postfix over qmail mainly because I don't like qmail's 
>>non-standard way of doing things (and I don't like djb's politics), over 
>>Exim because I prefer Postfix's architecture, and over sendmail because 
>>I want to *understand* what it's doing ;). I can't speak of Postfix 
>>highly enough - but I'm sure others feel the same way about their own 
>>MTAs, it sure is one of those religious subjects...
> 
> What are these non-standard way of doing things? Do you mean "not like
> Sendmail"?

No - I wasn't comparing it to sendmail. I just meant that I did run 
qmail a while back and just took a general disliking to the way it was 
organised and configured. Like insisting that user's use djb's 
daemontools (isn't that right?). Admittadly I didn't use it for too long 
so perhaps I'm being unfair.

> I've heard horrible things said about djb over the years but I've
> never heard anybody mention his politics! (I wouldn't mind some links
> as he doesn't seem to advertise his political views).

Sorry - again I didn't mean *political* views, I meant politics as in 
his outlook on software licensing (which you mention) and his general 
attitude.

> I know MTAs are personal things but with Qmail the author of the
> software always seems to be invoked as some sort of antichrist figure!
> I wish people would judge MTAs on their technical merits.
> 
> As a satisfied user I don't care if he happens to also be Satan
> incarnate; I don't know whether he is, I don't have any dealings with
> him. He's obviously a pretty bright bloke and got an impressive CV
> quite apart from the softs he's written:

Oh I don't doubt that - qmail is a quality piece of software I'm sure. 
Like you said - things like this come down to personal choice and I was 
just outlining the reasons for my own!

Andrew




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