Wietse Venema

“Writing software that's safe even in the presence of bugs makes the challenge even more interesting.”

“Most of the effort in the software business goes into the maintenance of code that already exists.”

“Windows favors multi-threading, which means that a service is implemented by one single process.”

“One bug in an SMTP server can open up the whole machine for intrusion.”

“In a previous life I wrote the software that controlled my physics experiments. That software had to deal with all kinds of possible failures in equipment. That is probably where I learned to rely on multiple safety nets inside and around my systems.”

“Defect-free software does not exist.”

“For many people my software is something that you install and forget. I like to keep it that way.”

“This will surprise some of your readers, but my primary interest is not with computer security. I am primarily interested in writing software that works as intended.”

“The Postfix security model is based on keeping software simple and stupid.”

“My reply is: the software has no known bugs, therefore it has not been updated.”

“Adding functionality is not just a matter of adding code.”

“However, writing software without defects is not sufficient. In my experience, it is at least as difficult to write software that is safe - that is, software that behaves reasonably under adverse conditions.”

“Like all software, Qmail can survive only when it keeps up with changing requirements.”

“When I write software, I know that it will fail, either due to my own mistake, or due to some other cause.”

“I want to avoid locking people into solutions that work only with Postfix. People should have a choice in what software they want to use with Postfix, be it anti-virus or otherwise.”

“At the time the Sendmail program had a very poor reputation with respect to security, with four root vulnerabilities per year for two successive years.”

“Qmail out of the box works fine, so people will want to use it regardless of licensing restrictions, even when the software does not ship with their system software.”

“Postfix keeps running even if one Postfix process dies; Windows requires that someone restarts the service.”

“Lack of documentation is becoming a problem for acceptance.”

“Coming back to the topic of computer security, the TCP Wrapper is an example of such a safety net. I wrote it when my systems were under attack by someone who appeared to walk through walls.”