[plug] This Mailing list

[Christian]

John Summerfield wrote:
> I don't think sendmail is as bad as people claim, and I don't believe many
> on this list will gain anything at all by replacing it; the act of
> evaluating alternatives itself is a pretty hefty investment (especially if
> it's not being undertaken by a hobbyist for personal use); recovering that
> investment would take quite some time. otoh I I don't believe it's perfect
> either, or necessarily better in any particular respect than those
> alternatives.

Sendmail probably isn't as bad as most people make out, but at the same
time there would seem to be *some* validity to *some* of the claims
given they come up so frequently.  Perhaps most on this list wouldn't
gain very much by replacing it but, consider that many subscribers to
this list have little interest in spending too much time administering
their Linux machines; they'd much rather spend their time using them. 
When the next sendmail security bug is discovered, if these people want
to keep their machines safe, they have no option but to subscribe to a
security announcement list and to go and hunt down and install a patched
version.  By comparison if they install Postfix the chances of a serious
security bug turning up are so much less so that this concern is greatly
reduced.  Is sendmail an MTA without merit?  Of course not.  Are their
better options for the vast majority of circumstances?  Almost
certainly.  As John says, there is some investment involved in
evaluating and migrating from one to the other -- which is a good reason
to consider carefully deploying sendmail at any new installations -- but
at the same time evaluating and migrating from sendmail to Postfix would
hardly be a "pretty hefty investment" by any stretch of the imagination.

Regards,

Christian.