Comments on: Why you shouldn’t really be using qmail anymore (or how I found a license I hate more than the GPL)

By: Graham Batty

Graham Batty — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 17:29:07 +0000

Mihai: Thanks, you are indeed correct that qmail has been released in the public domain. I fear it’s too little too late, though, because I’m not aware of a proper distribution and continuation of effort in the form of a real and authoritative fork. That’s what qmail needs.

Qmail-spp is indeed the plugin architecture I was referring to. The backscatter scripts out there in the public are pretty poor, though, unfortunately, and I had to write my own (though oddly, there’s a perl package that does most of the work, so mine is like 5 lines while most of the public ones are a couple hundred). It is so utterly irresponsible to run a mail server that backscatters in 2009 that it’s pretty much unacceptable that you have to go to extra effort to prevent it in qmail.

Nancy: Heh, no, this one’s not a project for me. ;P

By: Nancy

Nancy — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:38:48 +0000

They should either update it or let other people update it, especially when your server could potentially be targeted as a spam-sending fall guy.

Wait, this doesn’t mean you’re going to start a ground-up rewrite yourself, does it? ;P

By: Mihai Secasiu

Mihai Secasiu — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:01:25 +0000

Qmail is in public domain since 2007, so you can modify it and do whatever you want with it without asking for permission from djb.
The problem with accepting all messages can be solved by using a patch or ( my favorite ) qmail-spp