Sendmail may be planning to release some substantial new technology as open source. A possible candidate for this would be the company's Mailcenter Store, which is used to archive e-mail once it reaches its destination server. Its also possible that Mailstream Manager, which is an engine that handles mail according to policies, may also fall under these moves.

"My guess is you'll see stuff coming out this year, but it will go on longer than that," Eric Allman, the company's chief science officer and the original Sendmail author, said in an interview at the LinuxWorld Conference.