Exchange Killer On The Loose?

Month Date, 2006: One of the world's most popular message transfer agents is going Open Source. A surprise, as most people thought it was already.

Sendmail - the email server software that is credited with starting email itself - is to launch much of what was its 'Closed Source' (commercial) applications free of charge later this year.

Speaking at LinuxWorld in Boston, Sendmail's chief science officer - and original programmer, Eric Allman said,""My guess is you'll see stuff coming out this year, but it will go on longer than that." Coming from the man in charge of the product, this guess has to be given slightly more weight than usual industry scuttlebutt.

While the core of Sendmail, a primarily non-Windows application, is and always has been Open Source since its first release in 1986, commercial add-ons for it are produced by Allman's Sendmail Inc. It is these products that the Allman's guesswork applies to.

Allman is also widely quoted as saying that, "Because Open Source is fashionable, there is a lot of money in it. Money is a good thing but money is a bad thing. Things are progressing a lot faster, but they're more focused on commercial stuff that's going to make money. The intellectual property situation is bad and getting worse. To be a programmer, it requires that you understand as much law as you do technology." While this may well be stretching the point to near absurdity, the fact that Allman made such a statement at LinuxWorld and is apparently prepared to open his commercially viable applications while continuing to prosper suggests that the Open Source model is viable.

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