On Thu, 18 Jan 2001, Clemens Hermann wrote:
>I just use it because I want to stay as close as possible with LWQ.
I really hope that I don't have to remind everyone of this, but it looks like I
do.
THE REASON THAT WE USE OPEN SYSTEMS IS BECAUSE IT MEANS WE ARE NOT RESTRICTED
BY SOMEONE ELSE'S DECISIONS. DJB could have chosen to distribute qmail as a
closed source system, porting it to all the *nix's out there, and all of us
would have had to deal with any decisions he made. Personally I like being able
to handle bigger-than-standard DNS replies and being able to pipe all my mail
through a virus filter that is nice enough to open zipped files and tnef
attachments. And I realize that this could not have been done without add-ons
and patches to source code, in other words, I couldn't do this with Exchange.
This is one of the greatest things about open systems. I don't have to have the
Snow White worm infect every one of my workstations because of the decisions of
Gates, McNealy, or Berenstein. So, when you say that you use a configuration
that hinders you in order to stay standard, I tell you to either decide which
configuration works best for your purposes and use it, or just use Exchange.
--
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Matthew H Patterson
Unix Systems Administrator
National Support Center, LLC
Naperville, Illinois, USA
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