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

Defect-free software does not exist.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Sure, but competition is good for the user.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Lack of documentation is becoming a problem for acceptance.

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

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.

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

Adding functionality is not just a matter of adding code.

I love receiving fan mail.

CBS started to confiscate our packages and mail as a safety procedure. A lot of packages that people send for the holidays and to our kids we can't open. A lot of times they are from overseas. It's very upsetting at times.

Every once in a while, someone will mail me a single popcorn kernel that didn't pop. I'll get out a fresh kernel, tape it to a piece of paper and mail it back to them.

Twice I had been stopped by these jobs, and I thought the role on Dark Shadows would go on for about three or four weeks. And then, the phenomenon began, the role caught on, the mail started to flood in.

Learning music by reading about it is like making love by mail.

In terms of being a role model, I didn't start out to be one. I don't go to work every day with that in mind. But, I do get a lot of fan mail from young girls.

This was all the inspiration it took: We put 100 percent of ourselves in the lines. We personally take care of everything, from fulfillment to answering the mail.

Fan mail is one thing, but fans you meet in person are a different matter entirely.

The Postal Service delivers mail six days a week to nearly 140 million addresses. Every year this number increases by 2 million.

At this point, I think I would garner a lot of hate mail if I was now on the cover of Modern Drummer seeing as I'm not a modern drummer anymore.

My father had all kinds of instruments in the house that he would hide from my mother. He bought them through mail order!

If you want something, it will elude you. If you do not want something, you will get ten of it in the mail.

Our mail product, Hotmail, is the market leader globally.

Who needs fan mail when you have the Internet?

It seems a long time since the morning mail could be called correspondence.

I had a financial page to write in the Mail on Sunday where I'd give tips on shares. I worked there for two and a half years. Nothing compares to the burst of energy felt on a newsroom floor when a big story breaks.

There should be no censorship of mail.

Some very famous directors have started in the mail room, which is just getting inside the studio, getting to know people, getting to know the routine.

I think it's a sensible thing not to read your fan mail - not to take it too seriously.

I found through my fan mail that women... really wanted a role model.

He that respects himself is safe from others. He wears a coat of mail that none can pierce.

The people who send us fan mail written in blood say the nicest things, so it doesn't freak us out too much.

Star Wars was not a very big part but I enjoyed doing it and I get more fan mail for that than anything else I've ever done. It's quite extraordinary, it comes in every day, unbelievable.