Why is sendmail is part of the system and not a package?

[Gonzalo Nemmi]

On Tuesday 27 October 2009 6:20:35 pm Frank Shute wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 09:24:58PM +0200, Giorgos Keramidas wrote:
>
> [big snip]
>
> > Until then, the status quo is here because it works, it has been
> > stable for a very long time, and it serves its current purpose
> > "well enough".
>
> I don't use sendmail but it's easy enough to build a different MTA
> out of ports (at least Postfix is easy) and turn off sendmail, as
> others have pointed out.

Indeed Frank ... that has been well stablished for a long time .. not 
only in this thread but also on every faq on Freebsd and MTAs, handbook 
and other assorted texts.

> I can imagine that a lot of people do use sendmail - it's documented
> in the handbook for starters. If it was taken out and replaced with
> another MTA then there would be complaints that sendmail has been
> taken out or "replacement MTA" is the "wrong one".

Well .. someday UFS will be replaced by ZFS .. and one day Perl just 
dissapeard from base .. yet the worl kept turning, and even better .. 
no one got hurt ;)

in the other hand, those not complaining, will probably be really 
happy .. so ...

> If somebody's insane enough to write the patches to replace sendmail
> (will they be accepted?), then they are also going to have to replace
> all the hooks for removing the MTA, like sendmail currently has; and
> they're going to have to document the MTA in the handbook.

Regarding your question about the patches, well  .. that's what I was 
discussing with Giorgios ...
Now for the rest of the paragraph .. uhm .. yes .. that's the way it 
goes .. and that's the path every Linux distro and NetBSD took ... and 
the same path OpenBSD and DragonFlyBSD will take when the time 
comes ... 

> They'll also need a thick skin to handle all the brickbats that come
> their way ;)

And who didn't need them ;)

> I can think of many ways to more fruitfully spend the time that it
> would take to remove sendmail from base. Removing it from base would
> also mean that others have to spend time reconfiguring their
> system(s): not good.

I wouldn't be so sure about that without thinking on the mid/long term 
consecuences first.

Doesn't ZFS mean that you have to reconfigure (or even reinstall) your 
system?
 
> I vote for sendmail, even though I'm a postfix user!

There's no voting going on .. OP just asked a question .. ;)

> I don't like change for no good reason and nobody's supplied a good
> reason yet.

Well .. to some there are .. to some others, there aren't .. This is a 
discussion that winds back through time from a lot of threads ...

> Regards,

Regards
Gonzalo