[rhelv6-beta-list] RHEL6 Mailserver packages

[Ned Slider]

On 23/07/10 16:29, Scott Dowdle wrote:
> Chris,
>
> ----- Original Message -----
>> Frankly, having run Clamav in the past, IMHO it isn't enterprise-level
>> software. It needed constant attention, they intentionally broke old
>> versions at the drop of a hat, etc. Red Hat would have to just about
>> dedicate one (or more) people to managing Clamav in RHEL.
>
> Ok, I'm not suggesting that Red Hat has to fix and become the maintainer of clamav.  If clamav is broken, I'd hope someone would fix it.
>
>> The package set in RHEL is what Red Hat thinks it is economical to
>> provide to a wide base of customers.
>
> I'll agree with that statement but I have to ask... is what they provide... would you call it a usable set of packages for a reasonable email server setup?  Or do you (assuming you work on email servers) drag in things from the outside?
>
> In fairness there doesn't appear to be any Linux distro that has a good email server setup out of the box... although some are better than others in providing the raw materials via packages.  It is really quite sad.
>
> People are already using clamav whether Red Hat provides it or not.  I guess some folks are using more than one scanner... or maybe avoiding clamav altogether... and using one or more commercial products?
>
> TYL,

Given Red Hat's commitment to backport fixes to a stable package base, 
would you really want to be running the same versions of amavisd-new, 
clamav, postgrep etc in 7 years time? At best Red Hat might rebase to 
current versions at each update set.

The anti-spam and virus game is a constantly moving target and to 
achieve best results these packages ideally need to be maintained at 
their current versions. This is not an area that is ideally suited to 
the practice of backporting IMHO. Personally I still pull the latest 
version of SpamAssassin from RPMforge even though it is included in 
RHEL5. I suspect even if RHEL included amavisd-new, clamav, postgrep etc 
I'd still be using 3rd party repo versions of those too.

So for me these packages add little value by being included in RHEL.