11 ms·

Postfix 25 years old today

112 points by sillystuff 3y ago

annoyingnoob 3y ago
Thank you for all of the great software!
ChrisArchitect 3y ago
The mentioned New York Times article that "that brought open source on the radar of the CEO". Sharing Software, IBM to Release Mail Program Blueprint. John Markoff. December 14, 1998. https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/tech/98/12/biztech/articles/14blue.html https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/tech/98/...
- mrpippy 3y ago
  I love that "source code" was apparently too arcane a phrase to appear in the New York Times, so they describe it as "original programmer's instructions"
  - reddalo 3y ago
    Very interesting! It could've also been a choice made not to repeat "code" which already appeared in the "open source" expression.
mrlonglong 3y ago
It's a nice piece of software, switched to postfix from the grand old daddy of all, sendmail a decade ago. Haven't looked back since.
spapas82 3y ago
It seems that almost everybody is using postfix these days... Is anybody actually using sendmail? Are actually any reasons for using it (beyond the expertise/preferences of administrators)?
- koito17 3y ago
  > Is anybody actually using sendmail? Not sure if this counts to you, but I believe FreeBSD still ships with functioning mail out of the box, and they use sendmail. On FreeBSD 12 at least, sudo actually reports incidents to root's mailbox :) With that said, when I was engaged with the FreeBSD community years ago, there would be periodic bursts of drama over "debloating" the base install, and sendmail was one (of several) programs people wanted to remove in order to "debloat" the base install. So I wouldn't be surprised if the latest version no longer has functioning mail, let alone sendmail installed.
  - 1over137 3y ago
    I believe FreeBSD 14 just changed the default from sendmail to dma: https://www.freebsd.org/releases/14.0R/relnotes/ https://www.freebsd.org/releases/14.0R/relnotes/
    - koito17 3y ago
      Thanks for pointing this out. In the release notes, I see > sendmail(8) and its configuration remain available. I assume this means sendmail still exists in base installs. Do you know the rationale behind this decision? Upgrading from FreeBSD 13 shouldn't result in the binary suddenly going away, so I want to believe there are no backwards compatibility concerns with simply replacing sendmail with dma.
      - justsomehnguy 3y ago
        IMO dma(8) says enough about rationale: > dma is not intended as a replacement for real, big MTAs like sendmail(8) or postfix(1). Consequently, dma does not listen on port 25 for incoming connections.
  - mr_person 3y ago
    I believe they got their wish in 14... From the release notes: The default mail transport agent (MTA) is now the Dragonfly Mail Agent (dma(8)) rather than sendmail(8). Configuration of the MTA is done via mailer.conf(5). sendmail(8) and its configuration remain available.
adambb 3y ago
Always thought QMail was the best option back when Postfix came out, but it certainly has won the top spot over time.
- justinator 3y ago
  Well that's what happens when you don't ever update the app because you've decided that it's absolutely perfect.
- kiney 3y ago
  the problem of qmail is it's author DJB. He considered it 'done' which obviously isn't true. There are quite a few patched versions around but no fork got enough traction to become a living and maintained project.
  - arp242 3y ago
    For a long time you couldn't actually fork it because qmail didn't have a license and djb refused to add one due his unconventional views on licenses and his general stubbornness. So the only thing you could do was distribute a "patch set". And all of this also meant it wasn't packages in many repos. By the time he finally added a copyright notice it was kind of a "too little, too late" kind of affair. This is the story with most "djb-ware": daemontools, djbdns, qmail. I think it's a real shame because all of these had great potential to be picked up by others after djb himself lost interest. I suppose daemontools is the most "successful", but only in the form of the runit re-implementation.
    - kiney 3y ago
      yeah, I nearly forgot about the licensing chaos
- kjs3 3y ago
  I ran qmail for more than a decade I think (after sendmail), and don't regret it. But eventually ended up with postfix because I got tired of chasing patches to get qmail to play ball with the evolving, modern email world. At some point, the risk/reward equation inverted.
bsdmeister 3y ago
Good memories - mostly. Used extensively Postfix between 2003-2011 when worked on ISPs. Back then our Postfix servers handled around 150 Million Mails per month, we had very few issues, mostly related to integrations with other tools like spamassassin and database mailbox auth.
ipython 3y ago
Wow. I had used Postfix back in the day for our mail exchange gateways, but had no idea that it originated from IBM. Postfix was a great piece of software- did one thing, did it well, was easy to configure and manage, and was secure to boot.
somat 3y ago
Postfix is fine, much better than sendmail. However I have to admit I always had a hard time thinking in the same manner that postfix operated. Something about the list based implied logic hurts my head. Speaking of sendmail it always fascinated me, in the same manner as a train wreak. See sendmail is very nearly a completely generic store and forward engine and is configured such that it speaks smtp. Nobody really wanted a generic engine, they wanted an smtp engine and all the generic configuration was cryptic and getting in the way. so the standard method for actually configuring sendmail was a set of m4 convenience macros. The end result was you needed a configuration language for your... configuration language. Nether one of which was really any good. It sort of reminds me of those CSS compilers. or perhaps latex.
- kjs3 3y ago
  Nobody really wanted a generic engine, they wanted an smtp engine No, when sendmail was king of the hill, the whole world wasn't SMTP, so being able to mung addresses 'generically' and deliver messages between wildly different, non-RFC822 schemes was critical functionality. Sure, that's not how things are now, but you have to consider the context when it was created.
- arp242 3y ago
  Sendmail originated in the late 70s/early 80s when there were tons of incompatible systems like DECNet and whatnot, instead of just SMTP, and all of them had all sorts of buggy implementations. Today "SMTP" is analogous with "email", but that wasn't always the case. Sendmail won because it could talk to all of them, in bug-compatible ways. Later this feature became more of a liability than anything else and people unfamiliar with the original context are left scratching their heads and going "wtf is this shit?! Maybe those Berkley people really were on LSD?!", but it was a hugely critical feature and without it Sendmail never would have gained the adoption it did – it really was tons better than anything else.
cvalka 3y ago
Stewart smtp
TheChaplain 3y ago
Postfix is particular but rock solid, serving me well on my mailserver. Recommended if you are looking to set up one.
waynesonfire 3y ago
i installed it not long ago and really like it! glad i finally stopped listening to the don't run your mail server naysayers and invested sometime into learning how to do this.
jrnichols 3y ago
Happy Birthday, Postfix! I am also curious if there is a succession plan in the event that anything should happen to Wietse Venema.

112 points by sillystuff 3y ago

Thank you for all of the great software!

The mentioned New York Times article that "that brought open source on the radar of the CEO". Sharing Software, IBM to Release Mail Program Blueprint. John Markoff. December 14, 1998. https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/tech/98/12/biztech/articles/14blue.html https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/tech/98/...

mrpippy 3y ago
I love that "source code" was apparently too arcane a phrase to appear in the New York Times, so they describe it as "original programmer's instructions"
- reddalo 3y ago
  Very interesting! It could've also been a choice made not to repeat "code" which already appeared in the "open source" expression.

mrlonglong 3y ago

It's a nice piece of software, switched to postfix from the grand old daddy of all, sendmail a decade ago. Haven't looked back since.

spapas82 3y ago

It seems that almost everybody is using postfix these days... Is anybody actually using sendmail? Are actually any reasons for using it (beyond the expertise/preferences of administrators)?

koito17 3y ago
> Is anybody actually using sendmail? Not sure if this counts to you, but I believe FreeBSD still ships with functioning mail out of the box, and they use sendmail. On FreeBSD 12 at least, sudo actually reports incidents to root's mailbox :) With that said, when I was engaged with the FreeBSD community years ago, there would be periodic bursts of drama over "debloating" the base install, and sendmail was one (of several) programs people wanted to remove in order to "debloat" the base install. So I wouldn't be surprised if the latest version no longer has functioning mail, let alone sendmail installed.
- 1over137 3y ago
  I believe FreeBSD 14 just changed the default from sendmail to dma: https://www.freebsd.org/releases/14.0R/relnotes/ https://www.freebsd.org/releases/14.0R/relnotes/
  - koito17 3y ago
    Thanks for pointing this out. In the release notes, I see > sendmail(8) and its configuration remain available. I assume this means sendmail still exists in base installs. Do you know the rationale behind this decision? Upgrading from FreeBSD 13 shouldn't result in the binary suddenly going away, so I want to believe there are no backwards compatibility concerns with simply replacing sendmail with dma.
    - justsomehnguy 3y ago
      IMO dma(8) says enough about rationale: > dma is not intended as a replacement for real, big MTAs like sendmail(8) or postfix(1). Consequently, dma does not listen on port 25 for incoming connections.
- mr_person 3y ago
  I believe they got their wish in 14... From the release notes: The default mail transport agent (MTA) is now the Dragonfly Mail Agent (dma(8)) rather than sendmail(8). Configuration of the MTA is done via mailer.conf(5). sendmail(8) and its configuration remain available.

adambb 3y ago

Always thought QMail was the best option back when Postfix came out, but it certainly has won the top spot over time.

justinator 3y ago
Well that's what happens when you don't ever update the app because you've decided that it's absolutely perfect.
kiney 3y ago
the problem of qmail is it's author DJB. He considered it 'done' which obviously isn't true. There are quite a few patched versions around but no fork got enough traction to become a living and maintained project.
- arp242 3y ago
  For a long time you couldn't actually fork it because qmail didn't have a license and djb refused to add one due his unconventional views on licenses and his general stubbornness. So the only thing you could do was distribute a "patch set". And all of this also meant it wasn't packages in many repos. By the time he finally added a copyright notice it was kind of a "too little, too late" kind of affair. This is the story with most "djb-ware": daemontools, djbdns, qmail. I think it's a real shame because all of these had great potential to be picked up by others after djb himself lost interest. I suppose daemontools is the most "successful", but only in the form of the runit re-implementation.
  - kiney 3y ago
    yeah, I nearly forgot about the licensing chaos
kjs3 3y ago
I ran qmail for more than a decade I think (after sendmail), and don't regret it. But eventually ended up with postfix because I got tired of chasing patches to get qmail to play ball with the evolving, modern email world. At some point, the risk/reward equation inverted.

bsdmeister 3y ago

Good memories - mostly. Used extensively Postfix between 2003-2011 when worked on ISPs. Back then our Postfix servers handled around 150 Million Mails per month, we had very few issues, mostly related to integrations with other tools like spamassassin and database mailbox auth.

ipython 3y ago

Wow. I had used Postfix back in the day for our mail exchange gateways, but had no idea that it originated from IBM. Postfix was a great piece of software- did one thing, did it well, was easy to configure and manage, and was secure to boot.

somat 3y ago

Postfix is fine, much better than sendmail. However I have to admit I always had a hard time thinking in the same manner that postfix operated. Something about the list based implied logic hurts my head. Speaking of sendmail it always fascinated me, in the same manner as a train wreak. See sendmail is very nearly a completely generic store and forward engine and is configured such that it speaks smtp. Nobody really wanted a generic engine, they wanted an smtp engine and all the generic configuration was cryptic and getting in the way. so the standard method for actually configuring sendmail was a set of m4 convenience macros. The end result was you needed a configuration language for your... configuration language. Nether one of which was really any good. It sort of reminds me of those CSS compilers. or perhaps latex.

kjs3 3y ago
Nobody really wanted a generic engine, they wanted an smtp engine No, when sendmail was king of the hill, the whole world wasn't SMTP, so being able to mung addresses 'generically' and deliver messages between wildly different, non-RFC822 schemes was critical functionality. Sure, that's not how things are now, but you have to consider the context when it was created.
arp242 3y ago
Sendmail originated in the late 70s/early 80s when there were tons of incompatible systems like DECNet and whatnot, instead of just SMTP, and all of them had all sorts of buggy implementations. Today "SMTP" is analogous with "email", but that wasn't always the case. Sendmail won because it could talk to all of them, in bug-compatible ways. Later this feature became more of a liability than anything else and people unfamiliar with the original context are left scratching their heads and going "wtf is this shit?! Maybe those Berkley people really were on LSD?!", but it was a hugely critical feature and without it Sendmail never would have gained the adoption it did – it really was tons better than anything else.

cvalka 3y ago

Stewart smtp

TheChaplain 3y ago

Postfix is particular but rock solid, serving me well on my mailserver. Recommended if you are looking to set up one.

waynesonfire 3y ago

i installed it not long ago and really like it! glad i finally stopped listening to the don't run your mail server naysayers and invested sometime into learning how to do this.

jrnichols 3y ago

Happy Birthday, Postfix! I am also curious if there is a succession plan in the event that anything should happen to Wietse Venema.