Beginner Question

[Gerard]

> On Wednesday November 21, 2007 at 04:16:04 (AM) Andreas Kasenides wrote:

[snip]

> I was very suddened by the discussion in the Postfix lists. In my view   this
> sort of thing should happen in the commercial software world, not on open
> source projects. I would appreciate an answer (even if it is obvious) from
> somebody that nows enough of the internals of MS.

I honestly do not agree with that assessment. If these were commercial products
with millions of dollars, or whatever currency you are dealing with involved,
I can guarantee that Wietse and Julian would have worked out there differences
long ago. Microsoft could easily write code that would prevent any but its own
applications from working correctly; however, that would be suicide. Symantec
could develop its AV program to crash any MUA it did not approve of. That
would cost it money, something commercial enterprises are not to keen to do.

Yes, incompatibilities do arise from time to time; however, they are usually
attended to quickly. The old adage, "Money Talks" is relevant here. With no
monetary gain involved, or board of directors to contend with, the motivation
to remedy a situation declines proportionately.

Who is to blame for this diabolical situation is debatable. Postfix is the
program that Mailscanner is accessing, so therefore there could be made a case
that Postfix is the one to make the rules. Wietse has not made any overt
changes to his product that would prevent Mailscanner from working with it;
however, there is nothing that would prevent him from doing so. It would seem,
at least from my view point, that an acceptable API should be developed,
similar to what Dovecot and Postfix achieved, to alleviate this problem.
Unfortunately, that would require a dialog between the parties involved. From
what I have deduced, that does not presently exist.

Just my unsolicited 2¢.


-- 
Gerard