Quotes by Wietse Venema

About Wietse Venema:

Wietse Zweitze Venema is 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.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Defect-free software does not exist.

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

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

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

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

Wietse Venema

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

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

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

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

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

Wietse Venema

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

Wietse Venema

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

Lack of documentation is becoming a problem for acceptance.

Wietse Venema

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

Wietse Venema

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

Wietse Venema

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

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

Wietse Venema

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

Wietse Venema

Adding functionality is not just a matter of adding code.

Wietse Venema

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

Wietse Venema

Author Bio

  • NameWietse Venema
  • DescriptionDutch computer scientist
  • Born1951
  • CountryNetherlands
  • ProfessionPhysicist; Computer Scientist