Many things happen when a long-time open source project is converted into a commercial model. Some of these events are business oriented and expected: for example, marketing and sales departments appear. Some are less obvious, involving sometimes subtle changes in the way engineering is done.

The open source sendmail MTA has been the major MTA on the Internet since TCP/IP was released with Berkeley Unix as part of the conversion from the ARPAnet to the Internet in 1982. In 1998, as sendmail neared a "success disaster" (where the success of the project outstrips the ability of the development team to support it), a commercial company was formed to develop and support sendmail.

In this talk, I will explore some of the differences between sendmail when it was a pure open source development project versus as a commercially sponsored product. The focus will be on how engineering has changed as opposed to examining the business model, but some of this talk will necessarily be business oriented rather than technology oriented.