Why Mercury instead of hMailServer? (Doubt / Curiosity)

[Tr0n0s]

Why does Xampp for Windows use Mercury instead of hMailServer (which is free and includes "service mode")?

[Nobbie]

Isnt Mercury free?

[gnussbaum]

hMailServer is free as well

[Altrea]

The first and only MOD internal discussion about including hmailserver in XAMPP was lead in 2011 (before Bitnami took control on development).
The reason hmailserver was not an option in 2011 was that it was not open source (this has changed with version 5.4 which was released 3 years ago).

Personnaly i prefer using hmailserver on Windows instead of Mercury because it is easy configurable, but there are some CONs of hmailserver in comparison to Mercury i still see today:
- only available on Windows
- only runnable after installation and only as Windows Service (no portable functionality)