[lsb-discuss] Possible to get rid of /usr/bin/sendmail requirement in LSB 4.1?

[Alan Cox]

> in.)  So we could create a mail agent which accepts the mail using the
> standard /usr/sbin/sendmail interface, and if it can't send it right
> away, queues it in a queue directory, so when the user logs in, the
> e-mail can be sent.

Which existing sendmail does rather well in fact. Also the presence of
SMTP is itself an assumption and quite a dubious one in some
environments. The sendmail interface is protocol independent which
matters rather a lot if your environment is based on non SMTP mail setups.

> I'm not saying that this is the only way to design things --- just
> that the current system where you have to load tens of megabytes of
> bloatware and shared library just to send e-mail on a desktop system

Given people put Gnome on desktops thats really quite irrelevant (and
sendmail which isn't particularly small is only 1.5MB or so) and isn't
linked with a ton of desktop libs which are far bigger than it.

> is arguably broken.  And it's really not the LSB's place to dictate to
> distributions *how* to do this right, but I think it's pretty clear
> there are plenty of options that would allow the system to Do The
> Right Thing --- and what might work well on a Linux-on-a-cell-phone
> might be quite different from Linux-on-a-netbook or
> Linux-on-an-enterprise-server.

I'm just glad the desktop people haven't started trying to deliver their
email by dbus.

Alan