Hi,
Graeme Fowler :-
> [I can't speak for the developer team, so this is my personal take]
This is what I'm after :-)
> On Wed, 2007-12-05 at 11:38 +0000, David Restall - System Administrator
> wrote:
> > I noticed Marc Perkel's post a few weeks ago about the ongoing life
> > of Exim and he was swiftly diverted to exim-dev. There isn't much on
> > there about what is happening in the future and what the plans are etc.
> > I also note that exim-future is under-nourished with messages.
Snip...
> > A lot of us out here are just ordinary sysadmins trying to keep things
> > up and running and getting by on a day to day basis and things like
> > Exim are core to what we do. Most of these things (including Exim)
> > are stable, well written and supported - and still maintained and
> > undergoing development.
>
> And it still is. A lot has changed over the last few months, not only
> has Philip retired but the entire exim.org infrastructure - web, mail,
> version control, repository - has been changed, primarily courtesy of
> the nice people at Cambridge and a *lot* of work by Nigel Metheringham,
> ably assisted by several others.
I realise this BUT it's not new development or from what I can see bug
fixing (caveat - there may be no bugs to fix) :-)
Snip...
> > I'm in the process of building a new server and building and configuring
> > Exim on it, it will be 4.68, what is bothering me is whether this is
> > a good decision - I have been running Exim for almost 15 years so am
> > familiar with it, I have also run Sendmail and am familiar with that too
> > (I prefer Exim BTW).
>
> I am not aware of any security issues in 4.68, so it's as good a
> decision as sticking with a kernel on a system which has no local users
> likely to try brute-force privilege escalation. Sometimes there really
> is no point chasing the latest, greatest, bleeding-edge code; sticking
> with what you know is good is the pragmatic (and risk-assessed!)
> approach. 4.68 has been stable, and had several new features in it which
> enabled the ACLs in particular to become significantly more powerful.
Agree totally - it's the fact that I'm building new and 4.68 is what's
there that made me wonder what's happening - normally when I build a new
box with the latest & greatest version, it's on for a couple of days and
Phil releases a new version - it seemed to be that my build cycle was
closely related to his release cycle :-).
> > Is it time to consider alternatives to Exim as my MTA of choice ?
>
> Maybe, maybe not ;-)
>
> > Every sysadmin that uses Exim must be asking themselves this - this
> > list and the other lists are not answering the future questions and we
> > as a community need to be getting our heads out of the sand and making
> > decisions about what we are going to do. I would love to get into code
> > bashing and development - but don't have the spare time, we don't have a
> > replacement for Phil and I can't see anybody backing Exim financially to
> > keep it going so what really is going to happen ?
>
> What do *you* want to happen?
Ideally, I'd like exim to continue on its path and still be here and
working when _I_ retire (or drop dead which is more likely).
> > Who else is considering alternatives and what are you looking at ?
>
> I'm not. 4.68 is a bloody good piece of code. As and when something
> compels me to look to change it, maybe I'll drive 4.69 (or something
> else) forward.
>
> What will *you* do?
I'll be installing 4.68 but keeping an eye out for newer releases and
evaluating alternatives - just as I have always done. I think that
looking into alternatives is more important now than ever due to the
uncertainty. If I was starting from scratch, I wouldn't consider Exim
simply because of the current situation.
Regards
Dave
exim/2007-12-05.2.tx exim-users
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