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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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Wietse Venema
Age: 73
Born: 1951
Born: January 1
Computer Scientist
Physicist
Holland
Wietse Zweitze Venema
Updated
Reply
Bugs
Software
Therefore
Known

More quotes by 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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The challenge with Postfix, or with any piece of software, is to update software without introducing problems.
Wietse Venema
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Writing software that's safe even in the presence of bugs makes the challenge even more interesting.
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I want to avoid locking people into solutions that work only with Postfix. People should have a choice in what software they want to use with Postfix, be it anti-virus or otherwise.
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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.
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Postfix keeps running even if one Postfix process dies Windows requires that someone restarts the service.
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Sure, but competition is good for the user.
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At the time the Sendmail program had a very poor reputation with respect to security, with four root vulnerabilities per year for two successive years.
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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.
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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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However, writing software without defects is not sufficient. In my experience, it is at least as difficult to write software that is safe - that is, software that behaves reasonably under adverse conditions.
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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.
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Adding functionality is not just a matter of adding code.
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As of today, the Postfix mail transport agent has almost 50,000 lines of code, comments not included.
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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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Defect-free software does not exist.
Wietse Venema
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The Postfix security model is based on keeping software simple and stupid.
Wietse Venema
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This will surprise some of your readers, but my primary interest is not with computer security. I am primarily interested in writing software that works as intended.
Wietse Venema