post.office package

[haim [howard] roman]

We are currently running the sendmail that comes with SunOS 4.1.x. We
are thinking of replacing it with post.office, a mail system developed
by Software.com, Inc. Does anyone have any experience with this
software, or know something about it.

One of our biggest concerns is that the company might go out of
business. Does anyone know how secure Software.com, Inc. is? We
could avoid this problem by installing sendmail version 8 instead, but
post.office looks like it will be much easier to manage.

You can reply either via e-mail or to this news group.

Thanks
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Haim (Howard) Roman | Computer Center
ro...@brachot.jct.ac.il | Jerusalem College of Technology, ISRAEL

[Brad Knowles]

In article <DKtBr...@itex.jct.ac.il>, ro...@pesach.jct.ac.il (haim
[howard] roman) wrote:

> We are currently running the sendmail that comes with SunOS 4.1.x. We
> are thinking of replacing it with post.office, a mail system developed
> by Software.com, Inc. Does anyone have any experience with this
> software, or know something about it.

My only experience with post.office has been as the admin of a receiving
site where the sending site is using post.office and they are having
problems. If you want to talk to me privately about these problems I've
worked on, I'll be glad to do that.

My general opinion is that nothing that I have seen can really compare
with version 8 sendmail. Not for security, not for message throughput,
not for reliability.

Of all the programs that are available today, sendmail is probably one of
the longest-lived, if not the longest-lived. There are special-purpose
programs that can exceed the capabilities of version 8 sendmail in very
restricted areas (for example, smap is much more secure, but you wouldn't
want to run smap as an alternative to sendmail everywhere, instead you run
smap in addition to sendmail).

But nothing else has had anything like the debugging experience of
sendmail -- 90% of the Internet pounding on a program non-stop for years
and years is a testing environment no one else can come close to
achieving. And I'd say that the quality of the code (and the product
thereof) reflects this fact.

> One of our biggest concerns is that the company might go out of
> business. Does anyone know how secure Software.com, Inc. is? We
> could avoid this problem by installing sendmail version 8 instead, but
> post.office looks like it will be much easier to manage.

Less capable programs are usually easier to manage. Excel is a lot easier
to use and manage than SAS, but you wouldn't even think of trying to use
Excel to do mainframe-scale statistical analysis.

What you need to do is size your resources to your requirements. It may
very well turn out that post.office does more than you'll ever need, or it
may be that they can't meet your simplest requirements. You need to take
a hard look at the alternatives and make whatever decision you make with
full information.

--
Brad Knowles, comp.mail.sendmail FAQ Maintainer br...@his.com
The comp.mail.sendmail FAQ is located at:
<ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/mail/sendmail-faq>

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.1
GCS d+>--- s:(++) a-() C++(+++)$ UHI*++++$ P+>+++ !L !E(--) W--(+)@
N+(++) o? K? !w(---) M++ V PS+ PE-(+)@ Y+(++)@ PGP+(++) t+(+++)@
5+(++) X+(+++)@ R++(+++)@ tv-()@ b+@ DI++(+++) !D(----) G e++>+++ h+
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

[Andrew V. Stesin]

haim [howard] roman (ro...@pesach.jct.ac.il) wrote:
: We are currently running the sendmail that comes with SunOS 4.1.x. We
: are thinking of replacing it with post.office, a mail system developed
: by Software.com, Inc.

What is the motivation?

: could avoid this problem by installing sendmail version 8 instead, but

: post.office looks like it will be much easier to manage.

I'm pretty sure that, while once installed, sendmail doesn't require
any more management.

: You can reply either via e-mail or to this news group.

: Thanks
: ----------------------------------------------------------------------
: Haim (Howard) Roman | Computer Center
: ro...@brachot.jct.ac.il | Jerusalem College of Technology, ISRAEL

--

With best regards -- Andrew Stesin.

+380 (44) 2760188 +380 (44) 2713457 +380 (44) 2713560

An undocumented feature is a coding error.