Personally dropping support for users of debianhowto.de exim configuration
There is a HOWTO on the Internet which has the intention to help new users with creating their allround web-administrated exim mail server on Debian basis, using our pre-compiled packages. Unfortunately, this HOWTO starts with disabling all Debian magic in the exim4 configuration, which I personally think is WRONG to suggest to a newbie, and does not quite mention this in the documentation. The result is a big number of support requests in the Debian-specific and generic exim support mailing lists and IRC channels.
The makers of debianhowto.de do not seem to be quite interested in a peaceful co-existence.
In the last weeks, I have been bombarded with a lot of newbie-level support questions. In most cases, I found out that the people asking these questions have used the directions listed in the debianhowto.de HOWTO for using exim, vexim, courier and a lot of other complex mail-related packages which basically say "disable the Debian magic and use our exim4.conf".
This morning, I asked the makers of Debianhowto.de to clarify that their directions take the "Debian" from exim4 and that the Debian exim4 maintainers cannot do any support on the configuration generated by users of this HOWTO, and that this HOWTO generates quite an amount of support burden for us.
I received an answer (unreadable in the archive), which I had to quote back to the archive to get it in the archive in a human-readable way (also in German). It basically says "you suck, get lost, we have backing of the community", which is quite easy to say if you unload your support burden on other people.
I am therefore tempted to drop any support for vexim-based configurations and to send all people asking for support towards the debianhowto.de people who have quite clearly demonstrated that they do not care about the work load of the people providing Debian's exim.
If nobody from the Debian exim4 community objects, I'm going to place warnings regarding this in our documentation, on Debian's exim4 web pages and on the list description for pkg-exim4-users.
Comments
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Axel Eble on :
Deine Mail und Christians leider etwas... äh... fehlgeleitete Antwort haben jedenfalls einiges an Diskussion ausgelöst und die offiziellen Maintainer (zu denen Christian wohl offensichtlich nicht gehört) sehen das ganze doch deutlich positiver. Ich nehme an, du liest da noch mit?
Marc 'Zugschlus' Haber on :
Ja, ist alles weitgehend geklärt. In Zukunft werd ich halt versuchen, frühzeitig rauszubekommen, was der Benutzer nun genau einsetzt.
Axel Eble on :
Hm, okay. Grade fertig gelesen. Vergiß den vorigen Kommentar.
Enzo on :
find natuerlich net gut, wie debainhowto.de reagiert haben - trotz unterschiedlicher meinungen sollte man immer noch verstaendnis fuer die andere partei aufbringen, aber den schwachsinn, denn debian mit der konfiguration fuer exim angestellt haben "magic" zu nennen ist beinahe laecherlich.