Mikkel L. Ellertson: >> I don't know that I would call it "intentionally broken". Les Mikesell: > It is useless for any reasonable use of email - unless you only enjoy > talking to yourself. I would suspect that most people don't make use of sendmail, nor even need to. They'll use a mail client, and configure it to use their ISP's SMTP server while setting up the rest of the POP or IMAP settings. Those keen on running a local server will need to customise theirs, and know how to do. Just the same as running any other public server (HTTP, FTP, or whatever else). Sendmail does need to be tightly configured, by default. Historically, mail servers are one of the most abused on the internet, and one that causes the most problems for other people. >> It is severely restricted, but if you are going to run a mail server >> accessible to the outside world, you are going to have to make some >> changes anyway, unless you want to end up with an open relay. > No, the access file controls the ability to relay and the default file > supplied prohibits it. It is not necessary to break normal network > access for that. If you're suggesting that the client should accept all mail by default, I don't think I'd go along with that. Perhaps if it was easy to configure that behaviour. It'd certainly need to be configured to not deliver externally, by default, at the same time. But, most people are going to need to do a variety of things to be able to post mail. They'll need to configure their system securely. They'll need to have a real domain name (own one, or have permission to use some other one). And if they want to receive mail through it, they'll need to configure external services to send to their SMTP server and/or organise public DNS MX records.
