Wietse Quotes & Sayings

Windows favors multi-threading, which means that a service is implemented by one single process. — Wietse Venema

Perhaps kids really did come into the world trailing clouds of glory, as Wordsworth had so confidently proclaimed, but they also shit in their pants until they learned better. — Stephen King

As of today, the Postfix mail transport agent has almost 50,000 lines of code, comments not included. — Wietse Venema

As far as I'm concerned, being any gender is a drag. — Patti Smith

When I write software, I know that it will fail, either due to my own mistake, or due to some other cause. — Wietse Venema

One: Enormous relief. Two: Fury. Three: Envy, because he's got a cigarette and I don't, — Jenn Cooksey

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. — Wietse Venema

She didn't need friends; she needed to be a bigger bitch.

Chubby Chaser, 11/21/14. Available for preorder on Amazon. — Kahoko Yamada

Adding functionality is not just a matter of adding code. — Wietse Venema

With cooking, there's always the tangible and the intangible: that which is in the domain of sentiment, of the individual. — Alain Ducasse

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. — Wietse Venema

Lack of documentation is becoming a problem for acceptance. — Wietse Venema

Because I want every kid to be viewed as a person rather than as a member of a certain race does not mean that I'm not black enough ... Do they want me to be positive just for black kids and negative for everybody else? — Michael Jordan

We should get in the habit of continually seeking His counsel on everything, instead of making our own commonsense decisions and then asking Him to bless them. — Oswald Chambers

Postfix keeps running even if one Postfix process dies; Windows requires that someone restarts the service. — Wietse Venema

Writing software that's safe even in the presence of bugs makes the challenge even more interesting. — Wietse Venema

My reply is: the software has no known bugs, therefore it has not been updated. — Wietse Venema

One bug in an SMTP server can open up the whole machine for intrusion. — Wietse Venema

The challenge with Postfix, or with any piece of software, is to update software without introducing problems. — Wietse Venema

Getting an audience requires luck as well as talent. Some artists are private and shy. It costs them too much. — Dana Spiotta

Qmail out of the box works fine, so people will want to use it regardless of licensing restrictions, even when the software does not ship with their system software. — Wietse Venema

Defect-free software does not exist. — Wietse Venema

Sure, but competition is good for the user. — Wietse Venema

Music, being identical with heaven, isn't a thing of momentary thrills, or even hourly ones. It's a condition of eternity. — Gustav Holst

Oh yes, he was an idiot. He'd always been frightened by how much he needed her. And now it was too late. — Cornelia Funke

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. — Wietse Venema

The willingness to do creates the ability to do. — Peter McWilliams

It's hard to avoid the past but one goes forward. — Andy Summers

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. — Wietse Venema

Like all software, Qmail can survive only when it keeps up with changing requirements. — Wietse Venema

Most of the effort in the software business goes into the maintenance of code that already exists. — Wietse Venema

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. — Wietse Venema

However, writing software without defects is not sufficient. In my experience, it is at least as difficult to write software that is safe - that is, software that behaves reasonably under adverse conditions. — Wietse Venema

For many people my software is something that you install and forget. I like to keep it that way. — Wietse Venema

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. — Wietse Venema

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. — Wietse Venema

The Postfix security model is based on keeping software simple and stupid. — Wietse Venema