Hello. I filed a wishlist[1] on exim4 package asking to enable SPF[2] in exim4-daemon-heavy package, but maintainer rejected it and recommended me discuss this situation on debian-devel@, so I beg to ask your attention.
Currently, debian ships two versions of exim4 -- light with absolutely minimal feature set and heavy with (almost) all features enabled. But it misses one important feature -- SPF support. Maintainer explained his point back in 2004 in bug report #258210 [3] ---cite--- Now to the main point: Why won't I link exim against libspf? * SPF imho has not reached the necessary amount of standardization an acceptance for inclusion in a Debian/stable release, it is still in flux. * I do not want to drag in another library dependency. * Checking with spfd http://packages.debian.org/libmail-spf-query-perl instead of exiscan's spf-condition offers the same functionality, afaict. * spamassassin 3.0 will include SPF support, too. * I do not want to encourage SPF because I am not convinced of its benefits. (Discussion and links on benefits and downsides of SPF are not listed here intentionally.) ---cite ends--- But I have some objections: 1) first reason is not true anymore. Since 2004 SPF has a lot of testing; 2) even inclusion of spf doesn't break anything; nobody is forced to use spf tests. 3) another library dependency is not a problem at all. a) libspf2 is as large as 48k and b) exim4-daemon-heavy already depends on a lot of libraries. 4) spf-checking daemon isn't adequate replacement for built-in ACL SPF support; running mail cluster I have to launch an instance of daemon on every node. 5) exim has a lot of installations and some admins ARE convinced of spf benefits. Generally, If we have libspf in Debian, why should we disable using it in applications? Just let people decide to use or not use spf; don't make descisions for users. Well, maybe I'm wrong, but in my opinion Debian is about freedom; no one should make descisions for users just because he isn't sure. So can please someone explain me what should I do now? Am I wrong disturbing maintainer with this requests? Or perhaps could someone explain him he is wrong? Thanks a lot. [1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=377034 [2] http://www.openspf.org/ [3] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=258210 -- Alexander Vlasov ZULU-UANIC JID: zulu <at> jabber.kiev.ua -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
