Date: Wed, 27 Mar 2002 18:21:06 -0330 From: Paul David Fardy <pdfardy@mac.com> To: "Karsten W. Rohrbach" <karsten@rohrbach.de> Cc: stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: HEADS UP: sendmail 8.12.2 MFC'ed Message-ID: <BDE5BE99-41CC-11D6-BCD2-0003938656E6@mac.com> In-Reply-To: <20020327095909.C35734@mail.webmonster.de>
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Yeasah Pell: >>> The question is simply this: why are there large, complex, non-BSD >>> packages in src-contrib that are not critical to the running of many >>> types of systems, and not strictly a dependency of the system proper? Helge Oldach(helge.oldach@atosorigin.com)@2002.03.27 09:36:19 +0000: >> Because they always have been... >> ... >> This BSD thing is about tradition. "Alternative" software is what the >> word says: It's about re-inventing the wheel. This is the Linux spirit. I'd use "heritage" rather that tradition. Some recognition of heritage is due. After all, BIND *is* the *Berkeley* Internet Name Daemon and Sendmail was an important part of BSD <= 4.4BSD. But, while heritage may influence Sendmail's continued existence in contrib, isn't why it's stayed around--not directly anyway. On Wednesday, March 27, 2002, at 05:29 AM, Karsten W. Rohrbach wrote: > wrong, it is called evolution, a natural way of things evolving which > does not stop just because somebody puts up a sign "this is bsd, we do > it this way since 1970 and it won't change in the future". this has > nothing to do with linux at all. it is also not about re-inventing the > wheel. you seem to mix up the terms "tradition" and "religion" here, > introducing an implicit amount of folklore, hoping that it will support > your nonexistant line of argumentation. I think you're going to far ascribing "religion" to Helge's "tradition". But I agree that "It's always been done that way." isn't a strong argument. > when it comes to tradition, i cannot remember a single freebsd > distribution which natively supports to be booted from tape. I don't think every version of BSD did either. And I would bet good money that *noone* has a tape loading FreeBSD dist. :-) But the point is well taken: there's got to be more to the argument than that, ... and there is... > to come back to your original thought, do you consider having sendmail > on a firewall a good thing[tm]? sell that to your customers and prove me > that you do this successfully. this, just as a sidenote. Actually, many people do use Sendmail on their firewalls. I've even done some consulting on just such a beast. And I'm not convinced that any other MTA is inherently safer. Sendmail gets the bulk of the abuse and still critical in keeping Internet mail going. > as another sidenote, nobody prevents you from building a package > yourself on a machine having a ports tree installed. But, then again, noone prevents you from # rm /usr/sbin/sendmail* either. Ultimately, it's not about tradition or heritage and it's not about evolution, either. The real argument for keeping them runs like this: Sendmail and BIND work. Sendmail and BIND remain in active development. And, most importantly, each is actively maintained by FreeBSD committers. Pulling them out of contrib is not evolution, but revolution. You'll have to convince freebsd-core that it's better for [who?] to maintain [what?] than to continue letting Greg Shapiro--who's FreeBSD work may even been supported by Sendmail, Inc. Greg's work, alone, is enough to keep it in contrib. Greg ensures that "it ain't broke, so don't fix it." It seems to me that most people are content, if not happy, with Sendmail. And I don't think it just those old farts that actually learned enough to know why "R$-!$+ $@$>Canonify2 $2<@$1.UUCP>" was very useful (and still be useful somewhere :-). Helge Oldach(helge.oldach@atosorigin.com)@2002.03.27 09:36:19 +0000: >> Count this my strong vote against removal of packages that are >> traditionally part of the base system. Count this my strong vote for keeping working contributed software just where it is. Paul -- PS Does anyone know where I can find a PCI/UNIBUS adapter? :-) To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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