notqmail is similar to some other projects. What makes it different enough to exist?

notqmail and qmail

qmail has not been maintained for over two decades. No public revision control repository was ever available.

notqmail and netqmail

netqmail was a community effort. It has not been maintained for over a decade, and no public revision control repository was ever available. Quite conservative, it was not an attempt to generate new development, only to collate a few small and universally applicable patches already in circulation. notqmail is a fork of the final release of netqmail. We're conservative in our own way, too -- at least to begin with -- but our Goals and Non-Goals are rather different.

notqmail and s/qmail

s/qmail has been actively maintained for a long time. It ships with many modern features, some of which were developed independently by its maintainer, others of which came from popular patches being merged and then improved further. No public revision control repository is available.

notqmail is only a couple years old. Like its ancestors, and unlike s/qmail, notqmail does not yet ship with many modern features. It's more important to us to do our work...

  1. In public
  2. As a team
  3. With consensus
  4. Following the simplest, most qmail-ish designs we can come up with

...than it is for notqmail to deliver any particular feature on any particular timeline. Put another way, our how is our why .

We have more room to operate according to these priorities because people who can't wait for a featureful qmail derivative can run s/qmail today. And we have more code to borrow because s/qmail is so far ahead in that regard. We're grateful to s/qmail on both counts, and we believe both projects being active and distinct is beneficial to everyone who's still financially, emotionally, or otherwise invested in the qmail ecosystem.

notqmail and postfix

Postfix has been actively maintained for a long time. For people not already involved with qmail, it's a sensible default choice.