While I do consider myself pretty technical, after reading the article I don't think it is fair to spamassassin, but I dont think it was libelous as one person suggested. I was able to get SA installed in less than 1 hour. I downloaded the tarball, installed it, created a .procmailrc file to add the call to spamassassin and started having SPAM filtered. It took me more time to figure out how to have the SPAM moved to specific folders of my various email clients (Eudora, Agent, Outlook Express) than it did to install SA itself. I ran with this for a few weeks and was not fully happy because some spam got through. My next step was to investigate the 'Bayesian' filtering which is when I had to dig a little deeper and figure out how I could train the filters - this was tougher when using a linux server and windows clients with POP protocol (Imap might have been easier but not all my email clients support that).
I do take exception to Mr Harbaugh saying "Unless you are an experienced Linux systems administrator...". Well hell, I certainly want the person implementing my mail server to be experienced in the platform they are working on - be it windows or linux. I do agree that is was unfair to use the default package that came with RedHat. This would be like me pointing out how many security holes were in Internet Explorer and not having visited the Windows Update site before writing the review. I think the online support of people on the mailing lists gives this tool an advantage over their commercial counterparts. When I'm having a problem that I cannot solve, I like being able to search the mailing list archive and if I dont find an answer get help from the group here. Trying to navigate through telephone support and the usual "tier one" support personnel is a waste of my time and money. I think the bottom line here is this: Infoworld caters to the large IT shops who for whatever reason see things differently than a lot of smaller shops. With some time invested, Spamassassin 2.60 makes spam filtering available to a group of users who otherwise couldn't afford it. Hopefully with the recent passage of the CAN-SPAM bill we will be able to replace all these filtering systems by going back to the simple "if first 4 letters of SUBJ is ADV:" throw away. On Sun, 23 Nov 2003, Logan Harbaugh wrote: > I don't have control over how articles are edited. As it was, there were six > software packages in the original test, and they pulled one out because > there wasn't as much room as they'd originally thought. > > The article as I originally wrote it wasn't intended to be > anti-SpamAssassin, but I'd still have to say that even if the performance at > catching spam and false positives were comparable to the other packages, > installation, management, the user experience and reporting are not > comparable to the other packages reviewed. Unless you're an experienced > Linux systems administrator, Spam Asssassin is much more difficult to > install and configure than the other packages, and the focus of the article > was general anti-spam technologies, rather than Linux-based packages. > > > Thanks, > > Logan G. Harbaugh > 530 222-1164 > 693 Reddington Drive > Redding, CA 96003 > www.lharba.com ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: SF.net Giveback Program. Does SourceForge.net help you be more productive? Does it help you create better code? SHARE THE LOVE, and help us help YOU! Click Here: http://sourceforge.net/donate/ _______________________________________________ Spamassassin-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/spamassassin-talk
