Beginner Question

[Scott Silva]

on 11/21/2007 4:33 AM Gerard spake the following:
>> 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.

Microsoft has done this in the past. They made windows 3.1 crash on DRDOS is 
the first one I remember. They caused problems in a few versions of 
Wordperfect in the Windows95 days, although Wordperfect might have shot 
themselves in the foot on those.
  Symantec
> could develop its AV program to crash any MUA it did not approve of.
Have you tried a recent version of Symantec 360?
  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;
He does change it regularly, although it is his right to do so, and it breaks 
MailScanner often.
> 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.
If you look at some of the old dialogs, there was only one approved way to do 
things, and that was Wietse's way. That is more of a diatribe than a dialog.
> 
> Just my unsolicited 2¢.
I see your 2¢ and raise a nickel.

> 
> 


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