Ubuntu is under attack

[Matthew Garrett]

On Mon, Dec 19, 2005 at 10:01:15AM -0800, Mike Bird wrote:

> This blinkered vision is a fundamental misinterpretation of Ubuntu's
> stated goals.  Making Ubuntu Just Work out of the box means what it
> says, not "provide a bunch of eye candy and the software for
> a twenty kilo IPod".  It means in part that users don't have to lose
> a few months work before finding out that critical emails are being
> callously destroyed.  There are all kinds of legal liabilities
> there that Canonical isn't going to be able to disclaim, even for
> a free-as-in-beer product.

Please desist libelling the developers.

An out of the box Ubuntu install will not generate any email. Nothing is 
discarded. If you install anything that generates email, then it is your 
responsibility to ensure that you have something that will process that 
mail. If it's considered a vital part of the package functionality, then 
that will be described in the package dependencies. Postfix remains a 
supported part of the Ubuntu distribution - the only difference between 
the situation in Warty and the situation now is that it isn't installed 
by default. However, it's *on the CD*.

The decision not to install an internet daemon by default was taken in 
order to provide increased security, and also to allow people who 
actually /need/ an MTA to configure it appropriately rather than ending 
up with a (mostly useless) default configuration. If you disagree with 
any of the technical decisions, then please bring it up on ubuntu-devel. 
However, if your only argument is that postfix should be installed by 
default, then I'm afraid that it's not a situation that's likely to 
change. If you feel that it's vital for a distribution to come with an 
MTA as part of the default desktop install, then I'm sorry. Ubuntu isn't 
for you. It never was.

-- 
Matthew Garrett | mjg59 at srcf.ucam.org