Wietse Quotes

#1. On a perfect weekend, I'll stay in bed until I am rested, though I am not someone who sleeps late. Then I'll go for a run through the parks nearby, even if it is frosty and cold, and I love meeting friends for brunch. You know you are truly on a day off if you have time to do brunch.

Birgitte Hjort Sorensen

#2. The challenge with Postfix, or with any piece of software, is to update software without introducing problems.

Wietse Venema

#3. At the time the Sendmail program had a very poor reputation with respect to security, with four root vulnerabilities per year for two successive years.

Wietse Venema

#4. It is not shortage of time that should worry us, but the tendency for the majority of time to be spent in low-quality ways.

Richard Koch

#5. Sure, but competition is good for the user.

Wietse Venema

#6. Coming back to the topic of computer security, the TCP Wrapper is an example of such a safety net. I wrote it when my systems were under attack by someone who appeared to walk through walls.

Wietse Venema

#7. For many people my software is something that you install and forget. I like to keep it that way.

Wietse Venema

#8. As of today, the Postfix mail transport agent has almost 50,000 lines of code, comments not included.

Wietse Venema

#9. This will surprise some of your readers, but my primary interest is not with computer security. I am primarily interested in writing software that works as intended.

Wietse Venema

#10. 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.

Wietse Venema

#11. My reply is: the software has no known bugs, therefore it has not been updated.

Wietse Venema

#12. Lack of documentation is becoming a problem for acceptance.

Wietse Venema

#13. Consider the coincidences that you do not see. - Fabian Snowstrom, A Vampire's Reckoning

Vanessa Fewings

#14. Most of the effort in the software business goes into the maintenance of code that already exists.

Wietse Venema

#15. Defect-free software does not exist.

Wietse Venema

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

Wietse Venema

#17. 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.

Wietse Venema

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

Wietse Venema

#19. Postfix keeps running even if one Postfix process dies; Windows requires that someone restarts the service.

Wietse Venema

#20. 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.

Wietse Venema

#21. Adding functionality is not just a matter of adding code.

Wietse Venema

#22. True defeat, is when you allow yourself to become jaded by pain and disappointment.

K.A. Hosein

#23. 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.

Wietse Venema

#24. When I write software, I know that it will fail, either due to my own mistake, or due to some other cause.

Wietse Venema

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

Wietse Venema

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

Wietse Venema

#27. I don't expect an overnight change of all desktops to what the US Military used to call B3 level security. And even that would not stop users from shooting themselves into the foot.

Wietse Venema

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

Wietse Venema

#29. Qmail out of the box works fine, so people will want to use it regardless of licensing restrictions, even when the software does not ship with their system software.

Wietse Venema

#30. When we have to reply to anyone who has insulted us, we should be careful to do it always with gentleness. A soft answer extinguishes the fire of wrath.

Alphonsus Liguori

#31. You want to watch him, Julia," he told me. "He may look harmless enough, but appearances can be deceiving." Geoff grinned. "That's slander, that is. You know I always behave like a perfect gentleman." "Right then, Sir Galahad," Iain said dryly.

Susanna Kearsley