Chapter 1 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Internet email history goes back as far as the early 1970s,

when the first messageswere sent across the Arpanet, the
predecessor of today’s Internet. Since that time,email has
been, and continues to be, the most widely used application
on the Inter-net. In the olden days, email delivery was
relatively simple, and generally consisted ofmoving mail files
from one large host to another large host that served many
users.As the Internet evolved and the network itself became
more complex, more flexibletools were needed to move mail
between different networks and different types ofnetworks.
The Sendmail package, released in the early 1980s, was
designed to dealwith the many variations among mail systems
. It quickly assumed a dominant rolefor mail delivery on the
Internet.
Postfix was originally conceived as a replacement for the pervasive Sendmail. Its
design eliminates many opportunities for security problems. Postfix also eliminates
much of the complexity that comes with managing a Sendmail installation. Postfix
administration is managed with two straightforward configuration files, and Postfix
has been designed from the beginning to handle unexpected hardware or software
Postfix Origins and Philosophy
problems gracefully.

Postfix was written by Wietse Venema, who is widely known for his security tools
and papers. It was made available as open source software in December 1998. IBM
Research sponsored the initial release and has continued to support its ongoing
development. (IBM calls the package Secure Mailer.) There were certain goals from
the beginning that drove the design and development of Postfix:

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