My recollection it was billed as easier to setup than Sendmail. During the vote to make it default[1] it was also helped by being smaller than Postfix (at a tim

My recollection it was billed as easier to setup than Sendmail. During the vote to make it default[1] it was also helped by being smaller than Postfix (at a time when Debian was still supporting floppy disks for installation). There may have been some (with hindsight naive) justification that the easier configuration would make systems more secure by avoiding common Sendmail pitfalls. But I don't think we were thinking about security 20 years ago the same as we do now. It was mostly a "if you can put it in a chroot you'll be fine" attitude. [1] https://wiki.debian.org/Debate/DefaultMTA https://wiki.debian.org/Debate/DefaultMTA