
Notqmail: Collaborative open-source successor to qmail - zdw
https://github.com/notqmail/notqmail
======
pgl
Notqmail is a fork of Qmail, which "begins where netqmail left off".

A good description of their goals can be found on the wiki:

* [https://github.com/notqmail/notqmail/wiki](https://github.com/notqmail/notqmail/wiki)

> _[Notqmail] will provide stable, compatible, small releases that do not
> conflict with or break your local site customization or the other software
> you run in your mail system. notqmail also aims higher: we are developing a
> qmail-derived system that is extensible, easily packaged, and increasingly
> applicable to a wide variety of modern needs_

An idea of upcoming changes can be found on the roadmap:

* [https://github.com/notqmail/notqmail/wiki/Release-Roadmap](https://github.com/notqmail/notqmail/wiki/Release-Roadmap)

There's also an interesting discussion of Notqmail, with responses from many
of the team, on Lobste.rs:

* [https://lobste.rs/s/2r3stk/notqmail_collaborative_open_sourc...](https://lobste.rs/s/2r3stk/notqmail_collaborative_open_source)

~~~
pjc50
The release philosophy conflict is interesting. Very rarely do we see
"finished" software, but the current "official release" version of qmail was
released on June, 15, 1998. This is basically due to DJB's insistence on
avoiding bugs by taking the UNIX philosophy as far as possible; everything is
done by a small set of processes communicating over pipes, and the attack
surface kept very small.

The downside is its limited integration with other systems and especially
databases. If you want to configure qmail, it has to be through text files.
But if you want to operate one of the common cases of a relay-only host or a
single UNIX host delivering mail to its local users, it works very well.

~~~
schmonz
Extensibility is [an explicit
goal]([https://github.com/notqmail/notqmail/wiki#goals](https://github.com/notqmail/notqmail/wiki#goals)),
for reasons such as these. If we introduce some more small interfaces -- 1998
qmail was already ripe with examples -- we'll make it easy for anyone to
program extensions. If we make it easy for folks to program extensions, we may
find there lots of common extensions available. That's the hope, anyway :-)

------
koolba
Somewhat related, have there any updates or a forked version of daemontools?

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemontools](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemontools)

[http://cr.yp.to/daemontools.html](http://cr.yp.to/daemontools.html)

I’ve been using parts of it for _many many years_ without issue but it does
feel odd that nothing has required an update in nearly 20 years. Maybe the
Unix philosophy and DJB is just that good!

~~~
jasonjayr
runit is a modern rewrite folling djb's principals...
[http://smarden.org/runit/](http://smarden.org/runit/)

~~~
buildzr
I use runit for pretty much everything now, I love it, no need to worry about
if you're running BSD rc, systemd or sysvinit, there's always a runit package
available that integrates with it and it handles logging so nicely.

~~~
petre
We still use it under systemd to run our services. I don't trust systemd to
work reliably.

------
patchtopic
This would be great if some of the excellent components that work with qmail
to make a nice email appliance also got updated. qmail with vpopmail and
qmailadmin used to make a great email appliance, but previously the overhead
of maintaining it made it un-usable long term so I ditched it for
postfix+dovecote+postfixadmin

but there was a lot to like about qmail+vpopmail+qmailadmin

~~~
linsomniac
I feel like everyone has moved on from qmail to postfix; I wonder who is still
using qmail. I was a huge qmail fan back in the mid '90s, it was a breath of
fresh air in comparison to sendmail. But by the 2000s it was feeling largely
abandoned, had a lot of hoops you had to jump through, and Postfix was on the
scene and had none of those disadvantages.

The last time I used qmail, it was quite a pain to collect up all the required
patches and build, just to make a reliable MTA. I'm thinking things like the
TCP DNS patch so you could send e-mail to AOL.

I realize netqmail came along later to try to fix this. I guess I had just
assumed that everyone had moved on to postfix like I had.

~~~
arantius
Technically netqmail and with some other distribution (Gentoo) patches added,
but I still happily use qmail.

------
thomasdd
(not related to Qmail... but...)

Anyone who used [http://xmailserver.org/](http://xmailserver.org/) ? The
project looks dead for many years now. We used the software on production Mail
servers for years. It was very-simple to setup and use, and also very-very
flexible.

There is also forum
[https://xmailforum.marketmix.com/](https://xmailforum.marketmix.com/) . I
loved to read the forum daily :) 10 years ago.

I think the last feature added vas SSL support, back then in 2010. For me this
is a masterpiece of software when it comes to mail servers. (I loved the
minimalistic approach)

------
rootlocus
The original qmail was widely known for being _very_ secure and fast. This
implementation on the other hand, is apparently marketed using warez slang?

> Netqmail 1.06 is produced by this motley krewe

~~~
amfsn
Does using warez slang automatically make software less secure and slower?

~~~
Fnoord
It reduces confidence because warez is associated with running cracked
software of which you don't know exactly what was modified/added/etc.

~~~
jameskegel
My how far we’ve come in such a short few years.

~~~
Fnoord
Eh, not sure what you mean, but yeah some DRM is obnoxious and almost spyware.
Warden, World of Warcraft's DRM, is for example profiling your system _hard_.

------
buildzr
What's with "netqmail" in the readme vs "notqmail" here and in the project
name?

~~~
inportb

       README netqmail 1.06 4 years ago
    

I suppose the readme hasn't been edited yet.

    
    
       notqmail begins where netqmail left off

~~~
schmonz
Yes, exactly right. One other PR left to merge, then we'll update the docs and
cut 1.07.

