Hi Logan, First, thanks for addressing the list. I think it takes integrity and guts to respond rather than just run away.
-----Original Message----- From: Logan Harbaugh [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, November 24, 2003 8:05 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [SAtalk] An Open Letter to the SA-talk forum 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. LG >> Unfortunately for your readers, illustrating how much the state of the art has change imparts the impression that SA is static. You need to better express that state of the art for SA has changed too. The manner in which you chose to include SpamAssassin (SA) was wrong regardless of your explanation. But this strays from the real point. You know where the web site is and you should have obtained the latest version and you should have tested it againt the problem that it really solves. It is not enough to just compare all these products as they solve different problems. Your article does not properly address this. For example, I own stock in Postini and I love their service. I have a customer that subscribes to the Postini service and I would not even try to talk them out of it for SA or any other solution. Postini will not only protect against spam and viruses but it will also place the infrastructure costs on Postini rather than being incurred by the subscribing customer. As bursts like Klez and Swen come along, machines with greater capacity need to be able to handle the bursts of traffic. So Postini customers need not over design their infrastructure. Additionally, Postini customers do not need Email MTA/SMTP experts. They can continue to utilize groupware specialists. Now I can go on with other factors but I really don't need to to make my point. Now on the other hand, companies that utilize SA satiate a much different problem set. SA is not a product nor is it an anti-spam gateway product. SA is a tool that can be utilized within custom solutions. SA can be used on the perimiter, it can be utilized in a service, it can be used on mailservers that contain the mailstore, etc. I also have customers that will not use Postini because the Postini model does not address their needs. Postini can not be customized in any fashion like a solution that utilizes SA. And while we who use SA know that it's tagging accuracy can be configured to compete with any product on the commercial market, you failed to convey the reasons. Out of the box, an *up-to-date* version of SA is very effective. However, I think everyone does agree with you that it is not a hands-off solution . . . at least until it is configured properly within the target solution. Although you allude to an understanding that the solutions address different problems or criteria that addresses a problem set, you really portrayed the products as if they are equivalent. Each product, however, is really a unique solution that addresses a spam problem. Each solution is optimal for different environments. So the real question is not how easy to administrate, or how effective is it, or what has the best support, or etc. While the aforementioned points are important and necessary, the question that best needs answereing is what environments can best be served by the specific products mentioned in your article. <<LG 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. LG>> Of course it is relevant! This is exactly the point of SA. SA is a tool. Even in the most basic configuration (which is dependent on the MTA chosen), SA will take on different faces. SA is not the final product but a tool chosen for use within the final product. Comparing it to other solutions needs to address this. <<LG 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. LG>> But the point is not really clear. You are comparing SA out of an old box to current versions of other products. The comparison by nature is not correct without mentioning that SA can be used in other products like SpamKiller by McAfee. SpamKiller is a descendent of Deersoft SpamAssassin Pro. To make things equal, you would need to compare SpamKiller to BrightMail. SA is just the tool utilized within other products. <<LG 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. LG>> I would certainly agree that some organizations would feel uncomfortable with no non-commercial support. I don't know why though as support from some large companies I work with is a coin toss as to whether I get the problem solved or not. Others have gone through cycles of good/poor support. I don't really know that "most" is necessarily true. Might be a good article. ;) <<LG 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. >>LG And so you should. However, please also mention the nature of SA and where it may fit. It is really important that your readership understand what SA is and what it is not relative to commercial products. This list would obviously not exist if SA did not have it's place in the world. <<LG 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. >>LG Thanks again for responding Logan! <<LG --Larry ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: SF.net Giveback Program. 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