I find it curious that they refer to sendmail as "shareware".
I though that shareware was software that one voluntarily paid for if they
used it after some "evaluation" period.
It seems a lot of people do not understand the definition of anything
other than closed-source, commercial software
--P
On Sat, 3 Feb 2001, Stephen Berg wrote:
> After I got this email on the list I sent an email to sendmail.org
> asking for some supporting material to their website's claim of
> sendmail powering "the vast majority" of email servers. They replied
> with the mail that I'm including below as their response.
>
> Seems to me that sendmail.org has decided to redefine the word
> "majority" as being 40% instead of more than half like Webster's
> unabridged dictionary. (Kind of reminds you of a big computer
> company redefining standards eh? But I won't mention microsoft with
> that thought.) By the survey they reference that sendmail runs on
> 41% of mail servers, but they still call that a majority.
>
> Then of course they include a bunch of company propaganda and
> advertising stuff.
>
> I've CC:'d this to the sendmail employee that replied so he knows
> that I've forwarded his reply to the qmail list and maybe he can
> explain to all of us the difference between 41% and "vast majority".
>
> On 13 Jan 2001 22:16:34 -0000, D. J. Bernstein wrote:
>
> >I've set up a web page to combat Sendmail Inc.'s false advertising on
> >this topic: http://cr.yp.to/surveys/sendmail.html
> >
> >Sendmail dropped below 50% of the Internet's SMTP servers---including
> >idle workstations---last year; qmail has climbed past 10%. I suspect
> >that qmail now handles more Internet mail deliveries than Sendmail does,
> >although I don't know a good way to measure this.
>
> Here's what I sent to sendmail.org:
> > Your website claims that sendmail powers the "vast majority" of
> > internet SMTP servers. I'm curious how you determined that and if
> > you have the results of such a survey available.
>
> And here's the reply I got from them:
>
> Sirana Survey Puts Sendmail Way Out in Front
> Checking the brand name of 513,797 Internet mail servers, company
> finds 41
> percent using sendmail, 15.7 percent using Ipswitch IMail, and 9.4
> percent
> using Microsoft Exchange Server as their external Internet mail
> server.
>
>
>
> Jan. 25, 2000
>
>
> Sirana Software has released what it calls the most extensive survey
> of
> Internet mail servers ever compiled. In the dot-com domain, 38
> percent of
> the mail servers support sendmail, while 20 percent support Ipswitch
> Imail
> Server. Microsoft Exchange Server had around an 11 percent share, and
> no
> other product was in the double digits.
>
> The shareware package sendmail, predominantly the current version
> 8.9.3,
> had more than half the mail servers found in the (net) domain, with
> Ipswitch second at 14 percent and Microsoft out of the money with 5
> percent. Sendmail had 42 percent of the (org) domain, 43 percent of
> the
> Canada (ca) domain, 45 percent of the Germany (de) domain, and 37
> percent
> of the Australia (au) domain. Microsoft and Ipswitch trailed by wide
> margins in each case.
>
> Over in the U.S. military's (mil) domain, the story was quite the
> opposite. Exchange had a 32 percent share, and sendmail had only 14
> percent. However, fully 23 percent came up in the Sirana survey as
> unknown. Novell, Lotus, Netscape, and Software.com were all at one
> percent
> or below.
>
> Entire Internet
>
> Across the entire Internet, sendmail had a 41 percent share. Ipswitch
> had
> 16 percent and Exchange had 9 percent. Nothing else was higher than 4
> percent. This survey of course counts mail servers as its unit -- not
> email users -- but it ranks the major players in a rather different
> order
> than one might expect.
>
>
> Vendor Hosts Percent
> Sendmail 210,902 41.0%
> Ipswitch 80,721 15.7%
> Microsoft 48,362 9.4%
> Qmail 19,802 3.9%
> Software.com 18,058 3.5%
> Gordano Ltd 17,228 3.4%
> Unknown 16,851 3.3%
> Lotus 6,924 1.3%
> Eudora 6,832 1.3%
> Novell 6,802 1.3%
> NetWin 6,263 1.2%
> Netscape 6,216 1.2%
> Checkpoint Software Technologies 5,399 1.1%
> Seattle Lab 4,973 1.0%
> Exim.org 4,957 1.0%
> Others 53,507 10%
> Total: 513,797 100%
>
> Source: Sirana Software
> http://www.sirana.com/smtp/results.asp
>
> Annual Year-End Survey
>
> It's once again time for Messaging Today to gather reports and
> statistics
> from the messaging industry, working towards the publication of a
> Dec. 31,
> 1999 installed base report by month's end. That process already has
> started. Recently, Messaging Today checked in with Rockliffe Inc., as
> it
> prepares to launch MailSite 4 next month. The company is making a
> major
> bet that ISPs and ASPs can be coaxed away from sendmail to a
> commercial
> platform, and from Unix to Windows 2000. It's not just MailSite
> that's
> used as bait, it's also all the other applications and tools that
> work
> with the Windows NT family that the company hopes will attract
> service
> providers.
>
> New Version Next Month
>
> MailSite(3) is in use at some 2,000 customer sites, with a total of
> around
> 2.5 million users, according to company president John Davies. He
> said the
> launch of this newest version is scheduled for mid-February, to
> coincide
> with the Feb. 17 launch of Windows 2000 and the Feb. 15-17 ISPCON
> Europe
> 2000 show in London. He said the major enhancements over version 3,
> released last march, are in the areas of Webmail and scalability.
>
> "We've been able to achieve better scalability through integration
> with
> SQL server databases," Davies said, "and also by adding in some code
> to
> support clustering. We designed it so you can start with two nodes,
> and
> you should be able to take it up to four, eight, or ten machines. You
> can
> host a single domain over multiple MailSite machines."
>
> The user directory can be run on one machine, using a centralized SQL
> Server 7 database. The message store can run on another machine,
> optimized
> for high volumes of file reads and writes. Then multiple machines can
> be
> run as MailSite application nodes. This architecture, Davies said,
> has
> already scaled up to half a million users, and can probably go to a
> million users. The architecture gets around some of the high-volume
> filing
> problems of the Windows NT filing system by using a Network Appliance
> Inc.
> file server for the message store function. In that way, he said he
> can
> get the reliability and scalability of Unix at NT prices.
>
> Looking for Non-Unix ISPs
>
> "We're targeting high-end service providers. We're competing with
> Unix
> solutions, and with other NT solutions. And we think we have some
> advantages on both," Davies said. Large and established ISPs still
> prefer
> Unix, but if they're starting small and want to scale along with
> traffic,
> or if they want Webmail along with POP3 client access, Davies said
> they
> might find MailSite attractive. If they plan on getting to a million
> users
> in no time, they'll probably use a Unix solution. But only a handful
> are
> that ambitious about their own growth, and only a few dozen have ever
> gotten that big.
>
> Application Service Providers (ASPs), however, seem more receptive to
> Windows NT, he said, because they usually set up their clients one
> per
> machine, and NT has a lower cost for that type of configuration.
> Also, he
> said the ASPs find it easier to pick from the array of applications
> available for NT, and then to integrate them into the server for a
> customer.
>
> What Davies said he hopes also will attract ASPs and ISPs is the
> simplicity of the new MailSite Express Webmail interface, which is
> both
> easy to customize and feature-rich, given its avoidance of Java,
> JavaScript, and ActiveX controls. The Webmail interface looks and
> feels
> like Hotmail, but it also supports folders, address books,
> forwarding,
> changing passwords, and updating your own directory entry. It uses
> the
> IMAP protocol to talk to MailSite, so all messages remain stored on
> the
> server. That way, a user can switch from Webmail to an Outlook client
> without missing any messages. If they read them on a borrowed Webmail
> connection and don't delete them, they can read them again using
> Outlook,
> saving a copy locally.
>
> Webmail-to-Outlook Contact Synch
>
> The MailSite Express online address book can import and export
> contacts
> from an Outlook client, so users can travel with their name and
> number
> lists stored in their Webmail interface, reachable through any Web
> browser. Davies said Rockliffe wrote an Outlook service provider that
> adds
> a new button to the Outlook toolbar. When the button is pressed, the
> utility displays lists of the MailSite Express and Outlook contacts.
> Users
> can synchronize them in either direction. Customizing the interface
> to
> suit an ISP's look and feel is a process of editing three files,
> Davies
> said. Pricing will be around $1 per user.
>
>
>
>
> 2000 Messaging Online, Inc.
>
> Stephen Berg
> //- USAF Instructor -/- Reluctant NT User -/- Web Designer -//
> //- Home = [EMAIL PROTECTED] -//
> //- Work = [EMAIL PROTECTED] -//
> //- http://iceberg.3c0x1.com/ -/- http://www.3c0x1.com -//
>
>
