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Re: Status of qmail?



On Wed, Jul 15, 1998 at 02:15:54AM +0000, Joseph Carter 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.

	You're flapping your lips in vain. He considers it bad
	for qmail's reputation (as a fast and secure MTA) that
	people distribute modified versions of it. It doesn't
	matter who's responsible for the bugs, it matters that
	the end user sees qmail as buggy.

> > 	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.

	That's a bug in the prerm of that particular mailer (IMO).
	It could check the queue and fail, then you wouldn't loose
	mail (you would have to consciously wait to deliver it, or
	remove by hand).

> > 	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.

	Or even the patched sources. So it's back to "why Red Hat
	refused to use Qt".
-- 
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