Wietse Venema
Wietse Venema
Wietse Zweitze Venemais a Dutch programmer and physicist best known for writing the Postfix email system. He also wrote TCP Wrapper and collaborated with Dan Farmer to produce the computer security tools SATAN and The Coroner's Toolkit...
NationalityDutch
ProfessionScientist
agent almost comments dutch-scientist transport
As of today, the Postfix mail transport agent has almost 50,000 lines of code, comments not included.
delivery dutch-scientist hands mail program queue requests
Internally, Postfix does use multi-threading, for example, for its scheduler program that hands the mail queue requests to the mail delivery agents.
design dutch-scientist smart software
Like most people, I am not smart enough that I can design software without having to restructure the software every now and then.
writing safe difficult
However, writing software without defects is not sufficient. In my experience, it is at least as difficult to write software that is safe - that is, software that behaves reasonably under adverse conditions.
technology doe software
Defect-free software does not exist.
requirements software
Like all software, Qmail can survive only when it keeps up with changing requirements.
bugs software known
My reply is: the software has no known bugs, therefore it has not been updated.
bugs machines intrusion
One bug in an SMTP server can open up the whole machine for intrusion.
challenges pieces updates
The challenge with Postfix, or with any piece of software, is to update software without introducing problems.
writing interesting challenges
Writing software that's safe even in the presence of bugs makes the challenge even more interesting.
lines mail today
As of today, the Postfix mail transport agent has almost 50,000 lines of code, comments not included.
should-have people choices
I want to avoid locking people into solutions that work only with Postfix. People should have a choice in what software they want to use with Postfix, be it anti-virus or otherwise.
acceptance becoming documentation
Lack of documentation is becoming a problem for acceptance.
military feet shooting
I don't expect an overnight change of all desktops to what the US Military used to call B3 level security. And even that would not stop users from shooting themselves into the foot.