I'm not sure what patches you're saying are required. Most startups don't need much more than what comes in the box. What's crazy to me is the idea that they'd opt into BIND 9 preemptively, not knowing what their extended needs are.

This is, for what it's worth, the original objection to qmail as well --- "it's not even maintained". It's not maintained because for the core job it does, it's _correct_. There's not a lot of mail software (at least, not software written in C) that can make a competing claim.

Having been through djbware patch hell, I tend to agree, but did he not finally actually open source his software (both qmail and djbdns)?

Has that addressed the patchiness blechery?

On rare occasion, someone actually finishes a program. Just because there aren't a mad rush of patches doesn't mean that a program is not up to snuff.