[Mailman-Users] Extremely High Membership lists

[J C Lawrence]

On Wed, 28 Jun 2000 15:56:16 -0700 (PDT) 
Derek Simkowiak <dereks at kd-dev.com> wrote:

-> As I've written previously to this list, I'm a big Exim fan.
> [...]
-> experience is that Postfix/QMail are going to sustain and perform
-> better than Exim.

> 	The last couple of posts suggest that Sendmail sucks eggs
> when compared to the alternatives.  I've also read that Sendmail
> has a "shaky" security history.

This is certainly true.

> So I'm left wondering: If Sendmail is so inferior, why is it
> so popular?  

It was there first, has been the default MTA for many many years of
commercial and non-commercial Unixes, up till comparitively recently
handled certain niggly corners of MTA-dom better than anybody else
(eg certain forms of really nasty header rewriting), and by these
counts, has single-handedly defined the standard for MTAs for some
years.  The fact that really better fundamentally MTAs have only
been out for the last few years also helped.

> Why is it the default MTA on Red Hat and Mandrake, the two most
> popular Linux distros out there?  

Because its the "safe" and therefore the default choice.  Nobody
customer is going to be upset by that choice.  There's no "WTF!"
reaction.  Those customers who do know about the alternatives, and
know why they want them, also know more than enough and to be
willing to make the requisite adjustments.

That said there has been a progression of Linux Distros away from
Sendmail toward other MTAs (eg Debian's use of Exim).

> Does it have some competitive advantage over the other MTAs?

None that I'm aware of other than its legacy value.

Note: I'm not aware of a single large scale high volume commercial
service on the 'net that runs Sendmail.  Not one.  You can check
this youself by telnetting to the SMTP port on their MXes and
reading the HELO message.  

That should tell you something.

-- 
J C Lawrence                              Internet: claw at kanga.nu
----------(*)                            Internet: coder at kanga.nu
...Honorary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...