openqmail - a concept

Still inside the work of eQmail-1.09 I want issue some thoughts about future releases. The name is may be openqmail - but let's see. The domain openqmail.org is reserved . The idea behind is to create a clean, smaller, (more) flexible, (easy) extendable, independent (from third party packages) and as far as possible POSIX conform MTA in the tradition of the design of (net)qmail. It should be a MTA with core functionality - which includes authentication, TLS/SSL and an API, respectively for incoming and outgoing mails always. From an administrators POV it should be easier to install, basically to configure and mainly to maintain it. Due to this, there comes up a wishlist of todo's:

• make a qmail-dkim package, with qmail-sdkim, qmail-vdkim, mkdomainkey
• make the (old) qmail-pop3 stuff a separate package
• make the qmtp stuff a separate package (like mini-qmail?)
• include qmail-pwrap
• include qmail-chkpw
• replace qmail-qstat by qmHandle or a similar program
• include qmail-repair or a similar program (queue-fix?)
• force POSIX compatibility
• make a flexible plugin package to use with qmail-spp
• make more flexible and easier install routine (configure/make/make install)
• create a directory structure (e.g. directories doc, inc a.s.o.)
• remove real old unneeded stuff: start scripts, “cat man pages”

The number of points in this list indicates that it will be a lot of work. The order should not be a classification. At least there should stay the MTA only,

There is at least one point I want to mention that I won't discuss about:

• creating workarounds to support “buggy” programs, misconfigured implementations or standard violations

Does this mean that eQmail will die? No, not in any case. It will stay as core code base where openqmail will be a suited package. Or better - eQmail will be a independent part of openqmail. There are plans for eQmail-1.10 too, at least to bind an IP address (for IPv4 and/or IPv6) to an outgoing domain (may be). Sounds like a lot of work? It is. So if anybody is interested to help and does agree to the points above please join the openqmail development mailing list and leave a short introduction. Any real help is appreciated.

Otherwise openqmail will be discussed on the openqmail mailing list (closed!).

Updates:

• a new website is now online, still with limited content
• the DKIM package qmail-xdkim is out