| Developer(s) | Ronald S. Karr, Landon Curt Noll, and many others; currently maintained by Greg Woods |
|---|---|
| Stable release | 3.2.0.121 / November 2, 2005 |
| Operating system | Unix-like |
| Platform | Cross-platform |
| Type | Mail transfer agent |
| License | GNU General Public License |
| Website | www.weird.com/~woods/projects/smail.html |
Smail-3 is a mail transfer agent (MTA) used on Unix-like operating systems. It is freely available but is not a package under the GNU GPL. It aims to be a general and flexible mailer with extensive facilities for checking incoming e-mail. It is still in use on the Internet, but it has been mostly superseded by Exim (which was originally based on Smail).[1]
Smail-3 still follows the Sendmail design model, where a single binary controls all the facilities of the MTA. This monolithic design is generally considered to be inherently less secure, largely due to the lack of separation between the individual components of the system. Nevertheless, Smail's security record has been fairly clean, and has only been the subject of one BUGTRAQ advisory.[2]