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

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.

Words are the children of reason and, therefore, can't explain it. They really can't translate feeling because they're not part of it. That's why it bugs me when people try to analyze jazz as an intellectual theorem. It's not. It's feeling.

The age thing really bugs me. Do people have more of a right to not like what I say because I'm 19?

We worked out a lot of bugs and figured out who was working and who wasn't and how this beast functions. It was a lot bigger than we actually thought, and now we have a well-run ship where it feels I can actually have time to imagine and not just stress out about everything.

I have come to know Bugs so well that I no longer have to think about what he is doing in any situation.

I have to think as Bugs Bunny, not of Bugs Bunny.

I came from the country, and when I came to the city, I was ridin' high, you know. I was seeing more lights than I ever dreamed to shine in the world. 'Cos where I came from, there wasn't too many lights. Bugs made a lot of light, but after that there wasn't no lights.

I was lucky enough to get to see guys like Bugs Henderson, Jimmy Wallace, all those great Texas blues players.

Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence!

The Coyote is limited, as Bugs is limited, by his anatomy.

Most of the results of using technical bugging devices were of little importance for my service. It may have been different in counter-intelligence, where bugs in flats, etc., were used to obtain a lot of information about what counter-intelligence was interested in.

And every now and then people find the bugs, and they interpret those as cool failures in the Sims terms. For them it's like a treasure hunt, you know.

Back then, my idol was Bugs Bunny, because I saw a cartoon of him playing ball - you know, the one where he plays every position himself with nobody else on the field but him? Now that I think of it, Bugs is still my idol. You have to love a ballplayer like that.

I'm just glad that I have bragging rights to working with Bugs and Daffy.

The important thing to remember is that bugs don't actually talk.

I loved being outside. We'd hold lightning bugs in our fingers and pretend they were diamond rings.

Better biofuels are a really big deal. That means we can precisely engineer the molecules in the fuel chain and optimize them along the way. So, if all goes well, they're going to have designer bugs in warm vats that are eating and digesting sugars to excrete better biofuels. I guess that's better living through bugs.

People have no tolerance. They think all bugs are bad. It's the American way. If you don't like something, kill it.

Acting is a win-win situation. There is no risk involved. That's why I get tired of hearing actors who try to make out that there's a downside to it. Fame is an odd thing. It bugs you a little bit, but it's really not bad.

Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.

The country is not a democratic state. Therefore we fear that they might carry a recorder in their pocket or there may be bugs in the walls, and you cannot be absolutely sure that you get a straight testimony.

Hey, we all have our fear. Mine is bugs and lobsters!

It's a beautiful tale, and today is a beautiful day without any bugs.

I'm not saying we purposely introduced bugs or anything, but this is kind of a natural result of any complexities of software... that you can't fully test it.