But no one have mentioned licensing issues. Linux or *BSD do have quite liberal licenses comparing to QMail license or at least last time I read it, it was quite years ago. I have maintained my own set of patches with some of my own additions but it was a hurdle and it didn't make exchanging of those easy. My point it, maybe it is not only abrassiveness issue?
Oh, I see now that it went public domain in 2007. I had used it prior to the change (migrated to Exim and the Postfix later). Wonder if it would get a better traction and community behind it if it was OSI-compilant from the start?