your points 2 and 3 directly conflict with each other. his software is "difficult" to configure because he does it in a non-standard way. individual files for

your points 2 and 3 directly conflict with each other. his software is "difficult" to configure because he does it in a non-standard way. individual files for options, installing everything in its own root directory, using /service for daemontools, etc. he had these new ideas for software development, installation, and maintenance, so he implemented them and because they are different, people equate that with being difficult. he didn't like a lot of standard libraries, so a lot of his software uses his own routines (which has been extracted as libdjb - http://www.fefe.de/djb/ http://www.fefe.de/djb/) which is partially the reason for his impressive security record. i think you underestimate his impact on the unix software development community. your fourth point is just wrong. a lot of ISPs rely on qmail and djbdns and to say that they wouldn't care if they just disappeared is just silly. sure there are alternatives, but so are there to linux and gcc.