Wietse Venema
Wietse Venema
Wietse Zweitze Venemais a Dutch programmer and physicist best known for writing the Postfix email system. He also wrote TCP Wrapper and collaborated with Dan Farmer to produce the computer security tools SATAN and The Coroner's Toolkit...
NationalityDutch
ProfessionScientist
matter code functionality
Adding functionality is not just a matter of adding code.
agent almost comments dutch-scientist transport
As of today, the Postfix mail transport agent has almost 50,000 lines of code, comments not included.
design dutch-scientist smart software
Like most people, I am not smart enough that I can design software without having to restructure the software every now and then.
delivery dutch-scientist hands mail program queue requests
Internally, Postfix does use multi-threading, for example, for its scheduler program that hands the mail queue requests to the mail delivery agents.
people way forget
For many people my software is something that you install and forget. I like to keep it that way.
safety kind physics
In a previous life I wrote the software that controlled my physics experiments. That software had to deal with all kinds of possible failures in equipment. That is probably where I learned to rely on multiple safety nets inside and around my systems.
six-months want might
I was going to visit IBM for six months as a visiting scientist. Now, six months is a lot of time, so I came with a whole list of projects that I might want to work on.
years two roots
At the time the Sendmail program had a very poor reputation with respect to security, with four root vulnerabilities per year for two successive years.
writing computer surprise
This will surprise some of your readers, but my primary interest is not with computer security. I am primarily interested in writing software that works as intended.
wall safety topics
Coming back to the topic of computer security, the TCP Wrapper is an example of such a safety net. I wrote it when my systems were under attack by someone who appeared to walk through walls.
military feet shooting
I don't expect an overnight change of all desktops to what the US Military used to call B3 level security. And even that would not stop users from shooting themselves into the foot.
acceptance becoming documentation
Lack of documentation is becoming a problem for acceptance.
mistake writing causes
When I write software, I know that it will fail, either due to my own mistake, or due to some other cause.
should-have people choices
I want to avoid locking people into solutions that work only with Postfix. People should have a choice in what software they want to use with Postfix, be it anti-virus or otherwise.