On Wed, Jul 15, 1998 at 01:34:23AM +0300, Tommi Virtanen wrote: > Dan has restated his stand on this issue multiple > times. If someone can convert him this late in the game, > please ask me to sit down before breaking the news;) > > He is not willing to let people distribute modified > (differently-acting) versions of qmail, not even under > a different name. He feels all qmail installations should > work as _he_ designed, and thinks that he will be unjustly > blamed if "foo-spesific" qmail-versions fail. Debian bugs are reported to Debian maintainers. Upstream bugs are forwarded upstream. But then, that just takes care of Debian, not all dists. > Please do show it to someone else before sending - I've > been on djb-qmail longer than a Debian developer and > think everyone will agree this has been argued about > over and over. If you have good points, it is well worth > it, I just want to make sure history does not repeat itself. I think probably I will not be sending it at all. Most seem to be leaning toward the idea that I'm going to just get him angry, or me angry. (Which is less likely I'm sure..) > DJB's biggest problems with binary qmail distributions have > been with the removal of the previous MTA, etc. The Debian > package system takes care of that quite cleanly. It doesn't make sure the spool is cleaned first, but otherwise you're right. > You have read ftp://koobera.math.uic.edu/www/qmail/dist.html, > have you? He likes free distribution - but hates modified > versions. In a sense, it's Qt all over again.. you can't make > a simple patch and distribute that, as the system has to be > _identical_. You can make/distribute patches. Many patches exist to make qmail do things the default installation doesn't do. In fact, his page links most of them. I take that as a sort of endorsement for source patches---but the license clearly shows that if the patch changes the way qmail operates he doesn't want bins distributed. > Oh, what I wouldn't give to have a qmailish MTA that's free. > However, I'm quite happy with qmail-src.deb -- actually I have > some servers I don't intend to upgrade from 1.01, as it would > mean a major rewrite of auxiliary software;) I want a free program with the same attention to simplicity and security. Simplicity including the configuration.
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