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Wietse Venema Biography

Wietse Zweitze Venema (born 1951) 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.

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Wietse Venema Quotes

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

Challenges, Interesting, Presence, Software, Writing

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

Agents, Code, Comments, Lines, Mail

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.

Computer, Interested, Security, Surprise, Writing

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.

Defects, Experience, Safe, Sufficient, Writing

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

Business, Effort, Maintenance

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.

Change, Feet, Foot, Military, Security

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.

Might, Six, Six Months, Time, Visiting, Want

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

Like, Qmail, Requirements, Software, Survive

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

Favors, Implemented, Mean, Process, Service, Window

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.

Example, Safety, Under, Wall, Walls, Wrote

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

Causes, Due, Fail, Know, Mistake, Writing

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

Forget, People, Software, Way

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

Postfix, Security, Simple, Software, Stupid

Lack of documentation is becoming a problem for acceptance.

Acceptance, Becoming, Documentation, Lack

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

Dies, Keeps, Process, Restarts, Running, Window

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.

Respect, Root, Successive, Two, Years

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.

Kind, Physics, Probably, Rely, Safety

Wietse Venema Biography

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