To all concerned, I apologize for the apparent maligning of SpamAssassin in my recent article in InfoWorld. In my original article, I stated that I used the 2.44 release of SpamAssassin for two reasons - because it was the version shipping with the latest release of Red Hat 9 and because it would illustrate how much the state of the art has changed in the last year or two. This explanation was condensed in the finished article by copy editors, which is beyond my control. This will be covered in the letters to the editor section of InfoWorld so the rest of the world will know that I did not deliberately use an old version of SA to show it in a bad light against commercial products. I plan to review the current version in an upcoming article, and I am sure that it will perform better.
Regarding some of the other comments that have been made, some of you have said that SA is not hard to install, taking no more than an hour or two to download, install, configure and begin using. That is consistent with the 10 times longer number I used, because the other installation and configuration times were all around 5-10 minutes. You have said that an experienced Linux administrator doesn't find SA difficult to install or configure, and that additional functionality such as user-accessible white lists can be added, either through additional open source software or by writing scripts or programming to extend the functionality of SA. That's true, but not really relevant, unless there is a distribution that contains all of those features.
Correct, that's why we don't usually make comparisons between a component and a distribution, SA is a component, the products you reviewed with the exception of the outdated SA were all distributions that offer a bundled anti spam package
You have also said that I should have taken into account the fact that it doesn't cost anything before making statements about it being harder to install, configure and manage than the commercial products. SA does cost - but in an administrator's time rather than money, which I did say in the article.>
The same is true of support - while you may get faster or better support through this group than you get with commercial software, there's no guarantee that you'll get any support at all - and most organizations will find that hard to live with.
So, when I review the latest version of SA, you can expect performance to be better, but I will still look closely at installation, administration, updates, maintenance, reporting, granularity of management, and end-user features for SA, just as I will for any other anti-spam packages I review.
You cannot use the same rating criteria when you include SA, simply because SA is *not* an "anti spam package". The first sentence on the SpamAssasin home page states: "SpamAssassin(tm) is a mail filter to identify spam".
Your inclusion of SA in a review with the rating criteria that you have used and intend to continue using, would be like comparing the capabilies of a computer with only an operating system to a computer with a fully integrated office solution, in the office environment.
SA is only one component that if implemented with other tools by knowledgable system administrators will integrate flawlessly within the broadest spectrum of software, have virtually no manual maintenance requirements, includes reporting which because it is customized to suit the company is light years ahead of any commercial product. Has the highest success rate, with the lowest false neagatives/positives and offers a user interface that is simple and intuitive to use. To top that off, it costs considerably less than any other product on the market.......
The only way you could compare SpamAssassin to the other products you reviewed is if you are capable of creating a SpamAssassin based "anti spam package" in a reasonable amount of time that is equal to, or outperforms all of the others.
Obviously a reasonable amount of time would be dependant on the amount of users it is designed for. I created a SpamAssassin "anti spam package" last year that was comparable to the commercial solutions available at the time for a user base of over 4000 for $2700.00 (twenty seven *hundred* not thousand). You would be entirely correct if you assume that the current commercial products function better today than my year old package, however for considerably less than the initial $2700.00 this package would again be comparable if not better. You would also be correct to assume that in the short term, the commercial products may be a less expensive solution for a small user base.
I cannot dispute your claims on the commercial products you reviewed, their ability to install quickly and easily, good user interface and strong tech. support should all be considerations in reviews of expensive bundled solutions, I do however dispute your decision for the inclusion of SA when using a rating criteria that can only result in an overall low score because its compared to products that it does not claim to be.
I think I may understand why you felt it necessary to include SA, it is after all the benchmark that many companies like to use for comparison, and in many cases are in fact using or copying.
Terry...
Again, my apologies for creating a story that distressed so many of you. I do try to create balanced reviews that reflect the pros and cons of all the products reviewed.
Thanks,
Logan G. Harbaugh 530 222-1164 693 Reddington Drive Redding, CA 96003 www.lharba.com
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