Re: [Exim] Exchange looming..

Matthew Byng-Maddick wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 27, 2002 at 10:10:25AM -0500, Keith G. Murphy wrote:
>
>>The big question is: Can something that complex and closed-source, no
>>matter how impressive, be trusted with regards to dependability and
>>security? Especially when *you can't fix it*.
>>
>
> I've seen this argument a lot over many things, and I often suspect I'm
> in a minority in just quite how much code I have read for various of the
> tools I run on a daily basis.
>

[cut]


> But I think that the
> attitude of the developers (or, in the case of Exchange, the marketing
> department of Microsoft) is a far bigger reason to choose something, than
> "I can fix the source myself".
>
I think you overlook one thing: if you're actually having an intractable problem,

you're much more likely to look at the source. If it never happens that
you experience a real bug that hasn't been fixed, it probably means
someone else *is* catching them.

(OK, maybe I should put the question to Philip Hazel: How often have
folks on this list that are not "developers" of Exim come up with
bugfixes, or at least pointed out coding errors?)

I can promise you: if I had experienced the same problems with Exim as
with Exchange, I would have looked at the source by now.

By the way, I forgot to mention another bug that just bit me today.
About 1 out of 30 times, Exchange will decide that a particular message
coming from Exim on Linux cannot be relayed ("prohibited by
administrator"). The message is identical and identically sent to many
others that do get through. Completely random failure. Tell me that's
not a bug. If it were Exim, it would have been fixed by now, if only by me.