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As of today, the Postfix mail transport agent has almost 50,000 lines of code, comments not included.

Wietse Venema

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Wietse Venema
Age: 73
Born: 1951
Born: January 1
Computer Scientist
Physicist
Holland
Wietse Zweitze Venema
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More quotes by Wietse Venema

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One bug in an SMTP server can open up the whole machine for intrusion.
Wietse Venema
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Windows favors multi-threading, which means that a service is implemented by one single process.
Wietse Venema
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Writing software that's safe even in the presence of bugs makes the challenge even more interesting.
Wietse Venema
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Most of the effort in the software business goes into the maintenance of code that already exists.
Wietse Venema
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Lack of documentation is becoming a problem for acceptance.
Wietse Venema
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The challenge with Postfix, or with any piece of software, is to update software without introducing problems.
Wietse Venema
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When I write software, I know that it will fail, either due to my own mistake, or due to some other cause.
Wietse Venema
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The Postfix security model is based on keeping software simple and stupid.
Wietse Venema
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I was going to visit IBM for six months as a visiting scientist. Now, six months is a lot of time, so I came with a whole list of projects that I might want to work on.
Wietse Venema
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I don't expect an overnight change of all desktops to what the US Military used to call B3 level security. And even that would not stop users from shooting themselves into the foot.
Wietse Venema
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In a previous life I wrote the software that controlled my physics experiments. That software had to deal with all kinds of possible failures in equipment. That is probably where I learned to rely on multiple safety nets inside and around my systems.
Wietse Venema
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For many people my software is something that you install and forget. I like to keep it that way.
Wietse Venema
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Like all software, Qmail can survive only when it keeps up with changing requirements.
Wietse Venema
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Defect-free software does not exist.
Wietse Venema
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Adding functionality is not just a matter of adding code.
Wietse Venema
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Sure, but competition is good for the user.
Wietse Venema
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Postfix keeps running even if one Postfix process dies Windows requires that someone restarts the service.
Wietse Venema
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Qmail out of the box works fine, so people will want to use it regardless of licensing restrictions, even when the software does not ship with their system software.
Wietse Venema
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My reply is: the software has no known bugs, therefore it has not been updated.
Wietse Venema
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Coming back to the topic of computer security, the TCP Wrapper is an example of such a safety net. I wrote it when my systems were under attack by someone who appeared to walk through walls.
Wietse Venema