From: jconklin@netcom.com (J.T. Conklin)
Subject: Re: OK, so how do we slam shut this sendmail problem once and for all?
Date: Fri, 1 Sep 1995 14:22:32 -0700 (PDT)

> > There are other mailers out there with such design goals.  One is the
> > AT&T Bell Labs UPAS mailer (V10 Research UNIX & Plan 9).  I have it on
> > good word that if some gentle pressure were applied in the right places,
> > and if their bureaucracy works its magic, UPAS could be released as
> > "freeware".  Note that it is on the Plan 9 CD too.  Also there is
> > Zmailer, which has further advantages for very large gateways.
> 
> Is zmailer still maintained?  I poked around with it a few years ago,
> but not enough to do it justice.  You just can't install a new MTA on
> a production machine just to try it out.

Yes, zmailer is still being maintained.  There are some very small
updates coming out of Toronto, and more aggressive work is being done
in Finland.  If anyone wants, I can dig out the URL of the latest
Finnish beta.
 
> Should NetBSD switch MTA's?  That's a question that can't be answered
> easily.  There has to be a good reason to switch, and the alternatives
> have to be "better" enough to justify the pain caused by switching.  
> 
> We all know about sendmail's security problems.  Are there more to be
> discovered?  Maybe, maybe not.  It's hard to say.  Would any other 
> MTA be better at handling the load pain suffered before its memory
> upgrade?
> 
> I don't think that this is an issue that core can not take on at this
> time.  If anyone seriously believes that we need to switch to another
> MTA, feel free to do the research and come up with a recommendation/
> proposal.  (Note that this is not an invitation for weeks of debate on
> the mailing lists)

For better or worse, sendmail is the standard Unix, especially BSD,
MTA.  While I'm not particularly happy about that, I'm not quite
willing to sit down and write my own MTA from scratch.  All current
MTAs seem to have their own set of problems, and I haven't seen
anything so much better than sendmail that I'd advise switching
wholesale to it.  If people would like other MTAs, it would be nice if
ports got contributed, and put in the NetBSD equivalent of
/usr/contrib.

Drew Dean