Amen - I've always said that sendmail became what it was because it was the SMTPD that went out in 4.2 and followings. If the original BBN code had been left alone, since most people did not have the issues Berkeley did, they would never have bothered with
sendmail.cf. But because it was there and >>conceptually<< you could do all sort of stuff with it, people tried. We'll never know.
I was a fan of MMDF for years and later qmail - but I switch
ccc.com to google when the first offered it small folks like me 8-10 years ago and I never looked back.