Re: tlug: Re: djb [was: ibm.net with LINUX (Red Hat)]

[Rex Walters <rex@example.com>]

On Thu, Aug 13, 1998 at 12:08:40AM +0900, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
> 
>     Karl-Max> happens, common engineering practice tells us that it is
>     Karl-Max> better to start a new design from the ground up and to
>     Karl-Max> discard the old one. Which is exactly what djb did.
> 
> And so did the guys who wrote smail, and the guy who wrote exim.
> And the guys who created TrueType and NetBIOS and Windows NT.
> 
> Who among those got it right, and how can you tell by listening to
> them?

Harrumph.  You don't tell by listening to the author's opinions.
You tell by downloading, examining, using, analyzing, and
comparing.  I believe qmail is more robust and secure than
sendmail or exim because in my personal opinion it has a cleaner
design and was better implemented (and, believe it or not, better
documented).  NOT because of djb's .signatures or anyone else's
stated opinion.

[Note: I never got around to looking at smail for reasons similar
to yours.  I'd already found qmail and was quite happy with it.
No reason to look elsewhere.  I have no opinion re: smail.  Good,
bad, or indifferent.]

You mentioned Ed Yourdon.  Yourdon, Constantine, and Plauger have
as much to do with my opinion of qmail as Dan Bernstein.  Try to
determine the dataflow for sendmail or exim, then look at the
first few lines of INTERNALS in the qmail distribution.  Let me
know what you think.

Regards,
-- 
Rex
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