Comment Re:For the love of God, let it die! (Score 1) 217
Interestingly enough, I started using Mercury in 2000, version 1.48.
My search criteria for the MTA included full relay control, support for SMTP AUTH, support for APOP. Mercury was the only product running on Novell that satisfied all of my requirements. It did have a couple of idiosyncrasies, but I did not see a software which does not have some. At least as of yet.
First thing I made sure my installation was not an open relay and that it passed all abuse tests available at that time. I retested it regularly, at least once a year, and it never failed, not a single time.
I did not have a chance to look into the code so I cannot be a judge here. What I can attest to is that the code runs flawlessly for as long as the host server runs. And as Novell runs practically indefinitely so the Mercury does.
I completely understand your concern regarding poor initial defaults in terms of open relaying. Maybe the software should have been rewritten at certain point to make some settings permanent. Unfortunately David stopped Novell development in May of 2000.
Should the quality of the product be questioned based on the fact that it reflected the trends of the time and was consistently backwards compatible? I doubt...
My search criteria for the MTA included full relay control, support for SMTP AUTH, support for APOP. Mercury was the only product running on Novell that satisfied all of my requirements. It did have a couple of idiosyncrasies, but I did not see a software which does not have some. At least as of yet.
First thing I made sure my installation was not an open relay and that it passed all abuse tests available at that time. I retested it regularly, at least once a year, and it never failed, not a single time.
I did not have a chance to look into the code so I cannot be a judge here. What I can attest to is that the code runs flawlessly for as long as the host server runs. And as Novell runs practically indefinitely so the Mercury does.
I completely understand your concern regarding poor initial defaults in terms of open relaying. Maybe the software should have been rewritten at certain point to make some settings permanent. Unfortunately David stopped Novell development in May of 2000.
Should the quality of the product be questioned based on the fact that it reflected the trends of the time and was consistently backwards compatible? I doubt...
