Subject: Murk Merit: sendmail/majordomo vs. qmail/ezmlm

From: "Rahmat M. Samik-Ibrahim" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 05 Aug 1999 10:02:15 +0800

Hello:

I am not sure if this is a technical issue or a policy issue.
Therefore, I post it to the IETF general list. Please let me
know, if there is a better place to discuss it. Moreover,
whereas I am not a network engineer, this following may contain 
some obsolete assertions.

Some years ago, I was in charge in maintaining mailing lists
to many very slow and unreliable links. It was really a pain 
backplane when using the sendmail/majordomo couple. IMHO, sendmail 
is something like ADA; everything is available, even if we don't use 
it or don't know how to utilize it. Furthermore, sendmail is using 
the "big and fat" big queue approach. And, majordomo loved to send 
all errors to the list maintainer.

Then, I discovered "qmail/ezmlm". 
"Qmail" uses multiple queues. Just a couple of days ago, I observed 
an MX server for slow links with 22 concurrent queues runing on a
Linux box (sorry, not a BSD :^). Some remote sites could absorb up 
to 10 emails a second whereas some others could only absorb 1 email 
every 20 seconds. 
Meanwhile, "ezmlm" handles most of the list administrator pains. 
IMHO, therefore, I assume qmail/ezmlm has more merits than 
sendmail/majordomo. 

====================================================================
But, why is sendmail/majordomo still used, even in groups that are
worshiping merit systems? 
====================================================================

Is it a technical problem, or is it a religious problem, whereas the 
author of qmail has "different views" compared with all those felows?

Nowadays, there exist eGroups <http://www.eGroups.com>, OneLists, etc.,
which offer free (+ advertisement footers), or about US$60 a year for
maintaining a mailing list + archive + other goodies. I am not sure,
if many would like to work for US$60 a year for do that job. But in 
reality, there are still many high paid engineers doing that
US$60 a year job + plus arguing in a very long email thread
about how to do that US$60 a year job :^).

tabe,

-- 
- Rahmat M. Samik-Ibrahim VLSM-TJT --  http://www.vlsm.org/rms46/ -
- May no Force be with you! -------  http://go.to/grounded-theory -