None of the Above (was Re: Sendmail still default?)

[Les Mikesell]

Matthew Garrett wrote:
> 
>>> I'm pretty solidly of the opinion that email is nowhere near being the 
>>> most sensible way to get important information to a typical desktop 
>>> user. If a failure is important then the user needs to know about it as 
>>> soon as possible - mail provides no guarantees about timely delivery. We 
>>> have plenty of desktop infrastructure to give important alerts to users, 
>>> we're just failing to do so.
>> If local delivery of mail fails, there's no reason to think any other 
>> notification method would have succeeded.  The important point is that 
>> the user may not be present when the event occurs, and that desktop 
>> infrastructure may not even be running - and even if it is, the 
>> interested party may want the notification to be forwarded elsewhere.
> 
> Local delivery of mail is a poor solution, since it provides no 
> indication of priority difference between "You've got spam" and "Your 
> hard drive is failing". 

That's a solvable problem within the context of email, whereas starting 
from scratch and re-inventing delivery to arbitrary user-selectable 
endpoints is somewhat insane.

> If there's nobody to present it to, it can be 
> queued and presented at login - if the user is running on their system 
> but doesn't have the desktop infrastructure running, then by definition 
> they're already outside the standard desktop usecase.

Does that mean their system should die with no attempt at notification? 
  Or that desktop administration should be confusingly different than 
standard systems?

> I'm not arguing about the utility of an MTA for various situations. I'm 
> arguing that for one specific and very common situation, using an MTA to 
> deliver system alerts is a poor way of handling it. We should fix that. 

No, you should fix it so mail delivery is useful.

> As a happy side effect, it removes the need for a default MTA in the 
> desktop install.

Unless, of course, you care to follow standards.

> People who want an MTA then get to choose whichever MTA 
> they want and net human happiness is increased.

That has been the case for some time already.  As long as the 
alternative presents a command-line compatible /usr/sbin/sendmail, 
standard programs will work.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
     lesmikesell at gmail.com