Re: Please participate in popularity-contest
* Tore Anderson
> So, er, the only sane default is «not working»? I must admit I disagree
> with you there.. What is the rationale for that?
* Andreas Metzler
> It is not "not working". It is doing local delivery, which is imho the
> only reason we have a MTA in the base-system.
IMO a general-purpose MTA that is unable to send email in accordance
with RFC 2821 is best classified as "not working".
Besides, base even includes an MUA. I certainly expect an MUA to be
able to send to remote destinations; the days where the most common use
of email was to send to and receive from users on the same system are
long gone.
Then there's popularity-contest, which absolutely require an MTA that is
able to send email to remote destinations. Although not part of base,
d-i asks permission to enable it - but it won't work anyway as long as
Exim is configured with its default settings.
I think reportbug also deserves mention here as a tool that we should
endeavour to have working with an absolute minimum of user configuration
required.
* Tore Anderson
> In my opinion a sane default setting for a fully-flegded MTA like
> Exim would be to ask if the user had any specific SMTP submission service
> at his ISP or wherever he'd like to use, and if not - mail is sent
> directly using DNS/SMTP. YMMV.
* Andreas Metzler
> Dear. Just look at it. That is what is happening. You just have to select
> the right option.
Again, I'm aware that it is possible to override the default values
and thus enable all of Exim's functionality. What I'm arguing is that
«internet site» should be the default preselected choice, just like it is
in the Exim 3 package. That way remote email will work in most cases
without demanding that the user must configure the MTA differently than
the default.
I mean - how many users do you think are genuinely interested in
configuring an MTA? My guess is: very very few - because most of
them just want their email to work out of the box.
--
Tore Anderson
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