*BSD News Article 84596


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From: kyle_jones@wonderworks.com (Kyle Jones)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail,comp.mail.smail,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Sendmail vs. Smail...
Date: 9 Dec 1996 16:32:29 -0500
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Nigel.Metheringham <nigel@theplanet.net> wrote:
 > "Nora E. Etukudo" <nora.e@sirene.woman.de> writes:
 > [on the subject of sendmail]
 > > I 've looked of course at other MTA's (zmailer, qmail) but as I know,
 > > none of them has such a virtuousity in the rewriting capabilities.
 > 
 > But is this a good thing.  Generally letting people loose
 > rewriting things causes more problems than it solves.

sendmail was a product of the times.  I remember the network when
it was much more chaotic than it is now.  There was BITNET, UUCP,
CSNET, DECNET, X.400 gateways, and lots and lots of software
idiosyncracies that had to be dealt with.  You should have seen
UUNET's sendmail.cf from the bad old days.  It was twice the size
that it is now.  And unlike today, much more of the Internet had
to deal with gatewaying issues.  If sendmail didn't exist back
then somebody would have written it, believe me.

I would agree with you today that the header rewriting is not
nearly as important.