On Wed, Sep 11, 2002 at 08:54:46AM -0700, Jeremy C. Reed wrote:
: On Wed, 11 Sep 2002, Jerry A! wrote:
:
: > Just to be fair, I wouldn't consider this a decision an endorsement of
: > quality. The reason Exim is the default MTA in Debian is b/c it's the
: > *only* GPL'd MTA.
:
: Is this documented somewhere?
:
: Because standard Debian includes a lot of non-GPL'd software.
:
: sendmail's and postfix's licensing fit the Debian "Free Software
: Guidelines" -- and they are available as official Debian packages.
Check the list archives. I recall that the switch from smail to exim
was discussed ad infinitum around 1998. If I recall correctly, smail
needed to go b/c it was getting crufty and was no longer maintained.
qmail license made it prohibited. Sendmail wasn't really an option b/c
of it's syntax. That left exim and vmailer (before it was renamed to
postfix).
People hooted and hollered. But when the dust settled, in a
feature-by-feature comparison, the biggest issue that I remember was GPL
vs vmailer's license.
It's been 4+ years so it may not be sticking in my head correctly.
--Jerry
Open-Source software isn't a matter of life or death...
...It's much more important than that!
