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CNN on Sendmail for NT
J. Pierpont writes "CNN has an article on, of all things, sendmail. The unusual thing is that sendmail for NT is not open source. The article goes on to highlight some of the security advantages that it has over Exchange Server. I still think it's odd that CNN would have an article about sendmail."
Actually, since the company that created sendmail is the one selling it, they could do this with GPL'd software as well. As long as they didn't accept patches from other people, or required that the copyright for those patches be signed over to them, they could release a new version not under the GPL, since they own the copyright to the code. The GPL restricts everybody *except* the copyright holder on code - they still retain all the normal rights a copyright holder has.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Personally, yes, I would, but then again...I'm not the kind of person likely to be setting up an NT mail server.
I see your point; I guess I'm just kind of wondering aloud why someone would want to go half-way like that. I mean, if you're an all-Microsoft house, I would think you'd be running Exchange, so you can use those nifty proprietary Exchange features.
Otherwise, I would think someone who is already thinking down the lines of not tying themselves exclusivly to Microsoft solutions, if they wanted to use sendmail, would just set themselves up a UNIXy box of some sort.
But, you're right...if they do set up sendmail on their NT box, that's still a Good Thing(tm), because it means that normal mail programs (including those that run on non-Microsoft operating systems) can be used on the clients.
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Interested in XFMail? New XFMail home page
Well, turn it around. The real question is: if you've been told that your server has to be NT, wouldn't you prefer to be running sendmail than IIS?
The sad truth, as some of us are all too aware, is that technical considerations don't always guide the purchasing decisions. There's still a big high-level push to use Microsoft products in many places. Being able to use sendmail, with all the support and testing that it's gone through, very likely makes an NT mailserver that much more stable.
Lately, moderators are scoring things down simply because they disagree with it.
Usually its good to have discussion and diverse viewpoints. I lately seen a rash of moderation that wants to discriminate and squelch anything they can. This is a discussion forum, not a written essay exam. Lets encourage, not step on toes. Yet, they are strict. Hostile.
I have seen many hostile moderators that seem to be carrying a bat marking anything they can redundant or flaimbait. They must be new, or just troll moderators. Perhaps there are too many posts and people are getting fustrated, but I am seeing much abuse.
Well, don't forget that you'll have to carry all of that to Mt. St. Helens, as it's the nearest convenient volcano.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I see this as Sendmail, Inc. realizing that their market on Unix systems is starting to evaporate. These days, many admins are realizing that there are much better alternatives to sendmail (like exim, postfix, qmail), and happily, most of these are under good, open source licenses.
Sendmail needs to get their act together and remove years of cruft, or they'll soon find themselves welcome only on WinNT.
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Ian Peters
It is their source - they can't get back what is already "out there" but they can do what they like to anything new. Acutally, their license is a bit {unique,wierd} in that it lets it be distributed as "Open Source" or as binary only - but it stipulates that binary only distributions must be freeware. All the other restrictions are more BSD than GPL.
AdamT (IANAL)
... with eskimo chains i tatto my brain all the way...
It's easy for the Unix advocate to wonder why the hell open source projects are porting to NT. I've often asked myself this question and I've come up with one answer: To get them to quit using NT.
Sendmail is a perfect example. Once an IS manager uses sendmail and discovers just how versatile and superior it is over Microsoft's product, they'll be ecstatic- especially since the cost of ownership is probably a ridiculous difference.
But after a while, the IS guy is going to notice that inherent problems with NT itself are really bothering him. Since he doesn't have Microsoft products keeping him bound to NT, he can then move to a much-more-stable platform like Linux and stick with what he knows: Sendmail.
The great thing about this is that the Microsoft fans probably think open source projects porting to NT is some kind of validation of NT as a viable computing platform. Heh heh.
*ROTFLMAO*
This could well be a blow to Linux's increasing popularity as it addresses some fundamental concerns about NT.
No, It's a blow to NT - it will forstall the potential deployment of a bastardized, not-quite-standard Microsoft imitation of sendmail. It will also drive home the point to many a PHB that you can get sendmail on NT, but not for free. On Linux it's free. Contrary to popular belief, such things do matter to PHB's. [
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
Why is it good for NT? Because it allows for the migration of people used to using Sendmail on Linux. When there's yet another security breach on the system, they'll start looking more seriously at moving to NT, since the services they're running would be the same. NT5 would be a justifiable expense, while Linux would continue to prove the adage "You get what you pay for."
:-)
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
http://www.perform ancecomputing.com/reviews/software/9904c.shtml
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
Whatever the case, though, Allman and his friends at Sendmail, Inc. are doing exactly what companies who use the open source model should be doing: they're adding some real value, not just repackaging it. Besides, after all the hard work he's done on Sendmail, I'd say he deserves to make a buck on it.
You don't seem to know what Public Folders are about. Public Folders are kind of like usenet, in that it is a distributed database of replicas. If you introduce a new message into one replica, the servers will replicate that message to other replicas. The major feature that Exchange Public Folders has over usenet and other systems is that you can create replicas based on topology and clients will automatically be directed to the replica closest to them. They don't need to know or care which server has the replica.
Oh, and Exchange integrates Public Folders with its support of NNTP, so that you can access Public Folders via NNTP as well as with an Outlook client.
Argh... I was working on an order desk server this summer at my job. We originally started off running IIS on... get this.... a P120. Yes, that's for a dynamic realtime ordering and electronic delivery server. AUGH!It was terrible. After performance issues and delivery problems, we eventually installed win 95 and Apache. (No, I was under orders. Augh. It was gross.) From there, I finally got it over to an unix box. One of my biggest complaints was that win32 sendmail, in it's various implementations was one of two things. a) Faulty or b)expensive. One option we tried was both. It was funny... after working for months trying to get everything to work seamlessly on windows, we gave up and brought one of those old HP-UX boxes out of retirement... and we were in full operation in 6 hours. Yes, *6.* I was kicking myself. I got three days off.
You'll eat it and you'll like it.
Because you already have a slew of NT machines, and everyone in IT is trained in how to use them. You can migrate to Linux, but that costs lots of time and money. Even though Linux itself is free, it requires a real investment to get people trained on it.
That is, truly abysmal.
We were setting up an NT laptop to demo against a Samba box last week, and I got so frustrated just watching my boss (who actually works with NT) (my job title is Linux Specialist, I don't have to ever even boot Windows unless StarOffice can't handle the attachment) beat his head against that operating system, I finally told him straight out, "Don't ever make me program on NT. I'll quit."
I should think this is actually less a migration tool from *nix to NT and more in the other (better) direction. After all, replace Exchange with Sendmail, IIS with Apache, Office with StarOffice, and you may as well replace what's underneath it with something lighter, faster, and stronger...
As for sendmail being full of holes, it was my understanding that most things post-8.8 were pretty well fixed, with the usual turnaround time (sub-24 hours) on anything new...
I still think it's odd that CNN would have an article about sendmail.
Umm.. that's because it's a reprinted article from LinuxWorld. CNN reprints a lot of stuff that comes from IDG magazines..
It's not really odd; they've been advertising their closed-source Sendmail Pro thing for some time here on Slashdot.
Of course, the only reason anyone would need Sendmail Pro is because of the sheer user hostility of sendmail.cf and friends. Keep that bat book handy.
I've switched all my machines over to Exim. Nice configuration files, and licensed under the GPL.
I think the real question this article raises is...if you're setting up a mail server, and you've chosen sendmail as your MTA, why in the heck would you want to run it on NT?
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Interested in XFMail? New XFMail home page
I'd just like to draw attention to one problem with the current moderation forms. In flat mode, you select a moderation action from the list (+1/-1, comment) then you scroll down to read the next article. Unfortunately, the text focus stays in the selection list (BAD DESIGN, netscape). You hit an arrow key, the screen doesn't move, so instead you use the mouse or whatever. In the meantime, you just changed your moderation selection - it's way off screen, so you don't notice it until you hit the "moderation" button at the bottom of the screen. Then you see this nice little list of moderation actions you did, some of which you never intended, with no way to undo it. ****There has to be an "undo-moderation" button****. This is a very frustrating user-interface issue.
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
<Obligatory NT whipping>
Why should Exchange users be the only ones to enjoy the pretty blue user interface? Now even Sendmail admins can benefit from revolutionary new error messages!
The BSOD was the only thing missing from Unix sendmail. Well, that and a Navajo code talker to translate the .cf files.
You have new mail. You will have to restart your computer for this change to take effect.
</Obligatory NT whipping>
Sendmail and Exchange can't really be compared directly as they fulfill different needs. Sendmail is a MTA, Exchange is much more. The functions that sendmail provide are covered by one section of exchange. It's the Internet mail server (or connector) and not the Exchange MTA that's the parallel for those that are curious)
IMO, as an MTA, Sendmail wins hands down, for several reasons, being better at anti-spam, and general potential configurabiliy. Exchange however, would win on ease of configurability. (I'm not including sendmail pro, which I have no experience of, just sendmail via M4 and the cf file.)
Interestingly, this is almost typical of my experiences of MS vs opensource projects, the MS one is easier to configure, even if the OSS is more powerful overall.
Back to the topic, I've used and configured Sendmail, (right down to the cf file level when it wasn't doing stuff correctly). I've used exchange from 4.0 to 5.5. Both seem to be fine for thier respective purposes, albeit with a little work on both sides.
--
Exigo spamos et dona ferentes
part, and one that other vendors might do well
to mimic.
First, from an "ethical" perspective: NT is a
closed-source proprietary operating system. The
expectation that you'll get quality open-source
apps on NT is and should be unrealistic. It is
easier to create open-source software in an open
environment, and that's exactly what Linux and
BSD provides.
Moreover, because of the closed nature of NT, it
is more of an investment to get software working
"natively" on NT than under Linux (where almost
any task you'd want to do has been done and a
high-quality example has been published). Sendmail
is just "protecting their investment", an action
necessitated by Microsoft's strategy of using
closed proprietary APIs. Another reason for IT
people NOT to lock themselves into Microsoft's
proprietary solutions.
Now, from a business perspective: Win32 is where
the money is right now. If Sendmail can pick up
good revenue from selling their product closed
under NT, they'll have less incentive to keep
their extensions closed under Linux. This may
be the best of both worlds --- they can keep the
goodwill of the Linux community by distributing
open software there, but make money by charging
people to use it under NT.
It seems like an interesting alternative open-
source business model to me. Why haven't more
people discussed this as a way of making money
off open source development?
I think lately people have begun to realize that Perl and Sendmail and co are superior to their counterparts on NT so instead of learning Unix/Linux and actually getting the "real" thing they ask for an NT version. IMO this doesn't fix the problem it simply maskes it. You will still have all the problems you normally have with an NT mailer. Just because it's sendmail it doesn't mean that it will magically fix everything that's wrong with NT.
Vidi, vici, veni. (I saw, I conquered, I came)
If sendmail adds security, exactly how bad is Exchange Server??
This is because sendmail's license is based upon the BSD license. It specifically allows software to become closed.
I don't want to start a GPL vs BSD flame war here, but this is a good example of the possibilities of the BSD license.
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For a start, it's not a Sendmail story; it's an NT story. More specifically, it's a Unix Flagship App being Made Available for NT story. For me, the relevant paragraph cites Sendmail as making NT "more scaleable and more secure". This is a big thing (as we all know), and a factor that may weigh heavily in the minds of NT admins considering migration.
Which means there'll probably be a slew of 'traitor', 'sell-out', etc aimed at Sendmail, all of which cheerfully ignore the reality of business; companies are around to make money and the best way of doing that is to have your software work on as many machines as possible.
This could well be a blow to Linux's increasing popularity as it addresses some fundamental concerns about NT. But that's no reason to blame Sendmail.
For me, the great benefit of Sendmail on NT (and while is this strictly speaking from experience with the MetaInfo owned version, after trying out 3.0 at Networld it appears to be just as valid) was twofold:
1) it just works. period. At a previous job, we had to use NT because of a state project, and I didn't want to have exchange doing direct mail transfers. So, we got SendMail/NT, and it works like a champ. As a gateway, it's unbeatable.
The new version is even nicer, and it fixes a lot of the inabilities of 2.5 to customize setups.
Frankly, I don't understand the person who talked about its instability- ours was on a pII/350 (256 megs ram, 8 gigs hd) that was running IIS and Proxy 2, and that was a box that never hiccuped*. At last check, there were over 4 gigs of mail sent and 11 gigs of mail received on that box, with but 2 messages hiccuping. It doesn't interfere with other services, and it starts and stops quickly.
Now, I don't really know about its robustness for POP purposes. We didn't use it that way. The only account was mine for mail list reading. I have heard that the new version makes performance quite effective, as the previous one did apparently suffer with more than 500 pop accounts.
2) It finances sendmail's continued existence. When they bought out MetaInfo's product, Sendmail Inc. raised prices and removed the unlimited POP option, causing some grumbling. Before, it cost $250 for schools, with unlimited users. Still, for nonprofits, it's still a bargain (if you have to use NT), and the effective cost per user is less than exchange's.
*The big problem with NT is the myriad ways that it can screw up. But at root I think is people who think that making a production NT server requires less planning than a *nix box.
I wouldn't dream of taking a by-the-server-wizard installation of Redhat directly to use, and similarly, it's foolish to expect the same of NT in spite of Microsoft's portrayal. Plus, the other things that get added (like HP's print tools) can complicate matters unnecessarily.
Nor would I put it in use with testing it, and then rebuilding it from scratch, if it was my first such setup.
stored on computers from birth to the grave
I've deployed quite a few NT servers, but these days, I'm finding unix boxen more and more appealing. Unlike most people who gripe about the stability of NT, this isn't my issue. I have NT servers that have been running for well over a year without a hitch. My newfound preference for unix is due to flexibility. Configuring NT services is nowhere near as flexible as configuring comparable unix services, not without getting into some real code anyhow.
It's interesting how they point out the easy to use UI for configuring sendmail on NT. Although the primary reason I like unix is due to the power available by modifying configuration files to taste, I still think there should be two levels of configuration for any particular service.
Even if the second level is just a "browser" to give you an overview of the current setup, it would be a welcome addition. Sometimes its aggrevating to scroll through huge config files just to find one particular setting. I wouldn't give up the slightest bit of flexibility for it, but it would be nice.
I personally consider the port of sendmail a good thing. Exchange has some nice features, but it's a serious dog. And I've had the unfortunate experience of developing exchange/outlook commercial plug-ins on both the client and server side. It wasn't as bad as notes/vim, but it was close.