why is sendmail the adopted mta?

Simon 'corecode' Schubert corecode at fs.ei.tum.de
Sun Jan 2 04:03:40 PST 2005


On 02.01.2005, at 02:15, Miguel Filipe wrote:
After talking about this on #dragonflybsd@ efnet, and with some
agreace that there are more pleasent, easy and secure mtas out there,
ppl suggested I talked about this in the MLs.
. .. about the 10th time or so, now

One thing that allways itches in my head is why almost all bsds use
sendmail has the default MTA.
Why do I have gripes with sendmail?
1) Its difficult to configure
2) it has a lousy security track record
3) there are very good (superior) alternatives
these are your opinions, i gather. other people might disagree.

But there are also other choices: exim; qmail; ....
And the same way that I'd prefer that sendmail wasn't forced on me
when I install a  dragonflybsd... I don't mind having the choise of
mta on install.. instead of a default one.
we're not there yet. not even half way; for that we'd need to package 
the base system which is something that is highly controversial, too.

A also good solution, instead of adopting some other mta, having the
user too choose the mta on install is also better than having sendmail
installed by default.
that's the same as above. but where do you draw the line? maybe i 
myself don't want to use bsd ls and instead use gnu ls 
--with-fancy-colors=yes. should we give the user a choice there, too? i 
don't think so. but you have a choice when compiling world: set 
NO_SENDMAIL (or however it may be called) and sendmail won't get built. 
install the postfix port and you're happy.

Why do I bring this up?
Because I see no good reason to keep using sendmail ... and because I
believe that dragonflybsd is doing a great work adopting and creating
new software solutions that look better than the existing ones....
pf
open ntpd
dragonfly itself .. when comparing to freebsd.
as you might see no ``good'' reason, there might be hundreds of people 
seeing a very good reason to keep it.

In conclusion, I  thought about this because  I think that replacing
sendmail with postfix is a reasonable, racionnal and inovative move
that plays well with the DragonFlyBSD spirit!
in conclusion i think that keeping sendmail in base is a reasonable 
point, too.

i don't use sendmail, too. i'm using postfix, from ports, and i'm happy 
with it. you got the choice.

cheers
  simon
keywords: better MTA sendmail postfix switch change remove base system 
neverending story

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