Re: [exim] The problem with Free Software

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Author: Jan Ingvoldstad
Date:  
To: exim-users@exim.org users
Subject: Re: [exim] The problem with Free Software
On Tue, Jun 4, 2013 at 5:19 PM, Ian Eiloart <iane@???> wrote:

> Being open source, of course, Allan is quite at liberty to change the code
> before compiling. Or pay someone to do it, if he thinks that any of the
> rest of the code is useful. Or use another MTA.
>


If I understand Allen Bell correctly, the thing he's reacting to is this
part of the documentation (from
http://www.exim.org/exim-html-current/doc/html/spec_html/ch-the_default_configuration_file.html
):


The next configuration line is a kind of trigger guard:

never_users = root

It specifies that no delivery must ever be run as the root user. The normal
convention is to set up root as an alias for the system administrator. This
setting is a guard against slips in the configuration. The list of users
specified by never_users is not, however, the complete list; the build-time
configuration in Local/Makefile has an option called FIXED_NEVER_USERS
specifying a list that cannot be overridden. The contents of never_users are
added to this list. By default FIXED_NEVER_USERS also specifies root.


This seems like a fair solution, and if this piece of the documentation is
up-to-date (I assume it is, Exim's documentation usually is), it would
appear that Allen is making enemies for very, very bad reasons.

But just to be on the safe side:

Has the FIXED_NEVER_USERS compile-time option been removed?
--
Jan