I disagree that Paul is an ass.  He makes some semi-valid points about
people's fears, and about how sometimes ISPs misuse or misinstall tools
on their systems, and thereby negatively impact their users.  What I
mostly disagree with him about is that SpamAssassin goes out of its way
to make it hard for ISPs to screw up like that, and also goes out of its
way to minimize false positives as much as practical.  We also try and
give as many ways as possible for ISPs to allow their users to tweak the
SA settings, or opt out of having their mail processed altogether.

Now having said all that, we must keep in mind that SA is not perfect,
and needs continuous attention and tweaking to ensure that it can
satisfy the needs of as many people as possible.

There is no more point in our raving against Paul and others who
complain about SA than there is in his railing against us.  The best
answer to criticism is not counter-criticism, it's fixing the problem. 
I have received a number of emails from what I consider to be spammers
railing against problems they perceive with SA (like bogus first
amendment arguments, etc).  I don't think Paul is a spammer at all, as
far as I can tell, and his arguments are much more coherent and valid
than many I've seen.  I think he may misunderstand some of the ways SA
works, and certainly is misrepresenting the mindset of those directing
this project (mostly me, at least until Justin stops loafing around). 
We're not trying to stop people reading their mail.  I use SA myself,
and for my whole family, and I don't want them losing valuable mail. 
False positives are something that need to be planned for, and SA does
that better than many other spam filters.

We need to be sure that people are educated about why SpamAssassin is a
good product, not just claim "it's awesome" and then say that anyone who
criticizes it is a lunatic.

C

On Fri, 2002-04-05 at 22:27, Rob McMillin wrote:
> Craig R Hughes wrote:
> 
> >Hi there Paul.
> >
> [...]
> 
> >
> >
> >Yours,
> >
> >Craig Hughes
> >
> Danged polite. I would have been sorely tempted to trail off with a, 
> "and the horse you rode in on!" (or far worse) but I decline the 
> invitation and leave it for others to attend to. What an ass this guy is.
> 
> -- 
>     http://www.pricegrabber.com
>           "We are smarter individually." -- Larry Niven
> 
>                                  
> 
> 
> 
> 
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> 
> 


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