The chapter about Sendmail in Architecture of Open Source Applications[1] gives ... | Hacker News

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nicolaslem on Feb 12, 2017 | parent | context | favorite | on: Ask HN: What are some poorly written but very succ...

The chapter about Sendmail in Architecture of Open Source Applications[1] gives an explanations as to why it is so convoluted. Sendmail was originally written when TCP/IP and SMTP did not even exist.

[1] http://aosabook.org/en/sendmail.html

Animats on Feb 12, 2017 [–]

That's not the real problem. Sendmail was written when databases didn't exist in the UNIX world and before UNIX had locking mechanisms. Many of the legacy problems with UNIX/Linux come from components which maintain a database with special purpose code. Sendmail, BIND, login/passwd, etc.

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