30 Quotes by Wietse Venema

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

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

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

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.

I was going to visit IBM for six months as a visiting scientist. Now, six months is a lot of time, so I came with a whole list of projects that I might want to work on.

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.

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.

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

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