Editing Delivermail

{{Short description|Mail transfer agent}}
The ancestor of [[sendmail]], '''delivermail''', also by [[Eric Allman]], is a [[mail transport agent]] that used the [[File Transfer Protocol|FTP]] protocol on the early [[ARPANET]] to transmit [[e-mail]] to the recipient.<ref>[https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/sendmail-3rd-edition/1565928393/pr03s03.html Sendmail, 3rd Edition by Bryan Costales, O'Reilly Media, Inc., 2002]</ref> Due to deficiencies in using FTP to send e-mail, a new protocol was created in 1981 for sending e-mail, [[SMTP]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc788.txt|title=Simple Mail Transfer Protocol|access-date=2022-08-04}}</ref> After [[Domain Name System|DNS]] replaced [[hosts file]]s, DNS-style host names were also adopted.{{Citation needed|date=April 2023}}

In 1979, when ''delivermail'' was first shipped with [[BSD|4.0BSD and 4.1BSD]], the [[ARPANET]] was still using [[Network Control Protocol (ARPANET)|NCP]] as its [[network protocol]]. When the [[ARPANET]] switched to [[TCP/IP]] at the end of 1982, the road was paved for [[Mail transfer agent|MTA]]s which used TCP to deliver e-mail; ''delivermail'' evolved into [[sendmail]].{{Citation needed|date=April 2023}}

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
* [https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/tree/BSD-4/usr/src/cmd/delivermail delivermail 4BSD source code]

{{Email servers}}

[[Category:1979 software]]
[[Category:Mail delivery agents]]
[[Category:Message transfer agents]]
[[Category:Unix Internet software]]

{{Unix-stub}}