Daniel Bernstein: ten years of qmail security

Daniel Bernstein: ten years of qmail security

(The current paper, once again, compares qmail only with sendmail. How quaint.)

The licensing pronouncement is of course welcome news for qmail users, and Russ Nelson & company have announced that netqmail 1.06 will be produced soon, to add (relative to the aging 1.05 initial release) a pair of much-needed patches. My commendations to that group, as always.

Dan is of course quite correct that it's a settled principle of law that property can be abandoned. The problem that practice can create is that of predicting resulting effect in various legal jurisdications. Can it be claimed, and title assumed, by a subsequent "finder"? Can the original owner reclaim it? The original owner's heirs? Might it not, in some jurisdictions, become regarded as the property of the state (as is true in some places for abandoned automobiles, ships, and aircraft)?

Dan, in his words, would not be silly enough to go in front of a judge to reassert his title after explicitly abandoning it, but can he guarantee that isn't true of his heirs?

Different places have differing abandoned property and escheat laws: The effect of a public domain declaration may differ widely between countries.

It's an interesting and subtle area of law -- which is generally precisely what one doesn't want to be true of one's software licensing.

(My own modest compendium of people's writings on the subject: "Public Domain" on http://linuxmafia.com/kb/Licensing_and_Law/)

Rick Moen
rick@linuxmafia.com