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

[pete wright]

On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 7:14 PM, Frank Shute <frank at shute.org.uk> wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 08:45:59PM -0200, Gonzalo Nemmi wrote:
>>
>> On Tuesday 27 October 2009 7:31:34 pm Jerry McAllister wrote:
>>
> [snippage]
>>
>> > So, that leaves personal preference as the only real reason
>> > for wanting to replace it.
>>
>> Let me get this straight .. that means that  every Linux distro, NetBSD,
>> OpenBSD and DragonFlyBSD are all doing it just out of personal
>> preference?
>>
>
> I'll speculate as to the reasons:
>
> NetBSD: probably wanted something smaller footprint-wise.
>
> OpenBSD: wanted something more secure.
>
> Dragonfly: started afresh, so could replace it without many headaches.
>
> RedHat: poor package management made it a pain to upgrade.
>
> FreeBSD: ?
>
> I can't think of a good reason why FreeBSD should get rid of it.
>
> Saying that, it would be neat if it was taken out of base and replaced
> with something minimal that could cope with the demands of cron and
> not much else. Then the user is expected to install a MTA of their
> choice out of ports.
>
> That would mean less code in base and fewer security advisories.
>

yea i like where you are going with this frank - perhaps when
opensmtpd is done we'll be in the position to import this into the
freebsd tree?  it sounds like it might fit the bill :)

-pete


-- 
pete wright
www.nycbug.org