I was debating whether or not to get involved with this thread, and it looks like the original issue that Richard was concerned about has been addressed so that's good. However, my other issue with the thread so far comes from the misleading or otherwise incorrect information being presented which I'll try to respond to below.
On Fri, Aug 11, 2006 at 12:26:08PM -0400, Chris Santerre wrote:
> Ok, no. SARE and the official SA are worlds apart. SARE has been setup to be
> QUICK and accurate. SA is accurate. SARE wants to get good rules out when
> they are needed. Now saupdate make the DELIVERY of that possible. But the
> creation of rules in the official method of SA is... please pardon me... a
> clusterfsck!
Chris! I'm surprised to hear you spreading this misinformation.
I don't really see how the project's rule development is a clusterfsck.
People commit rules for testing, they get tested, if they're good they're
put in an update. What's the problem?
I also don't understand the quick and "good rules out when they are
needed" statements. You're implying that the SA project doesn't have
these goals, which is of course completely incorrect.
If you think the system is broken please feel free to chip in and help
improve it. If you just complain and that's it, the problems won't get
solved.
> And the apache lic is like reading the fine print on a life insurance
> policy. I've looked into what it would take to make SARE a part of SA
> officialy. Yeah, I'll pass.
Well, it's a software license so it's lawyery, as is the nature of such
things. What's the issue? It's actually a pretty straightforward read
compared to some other licenses out there. In Theo's terse IANAL mode:
- anything licensed under the ASL can be used and redistributed by anybody
- if redistributing (section 4):
- the license text must be included
- it must be made clear that modifications were made if there were any made
- all attribution/copywrites/etc must stay in the source code
- anything that was added or modified can be covered under any
license/terms desired
- any contributions to the project will be licensed under the ASL unless
otherwise explicitly stated
- trademarks (in our case "SpamAssassin") may only be used as is specified in
the SA TRADEMARK file
- the work is provided "as is" with no warranties
I haven't looked into what it would take to make the current SARE rules
part of SA, it could be a lot, it could be a little, I wouldn't know
the specifics. However, it's trivial to make new rules part of SA --
publish them under the ASL or even better imo via the SA project.
Frankly, I don't understand the issue here anyway. Sometimes things
worth doing require effort. If our goals are the same, which I believe
is fighting spam which in itself is a difficult task, why shy away from
it because it may be hard?
> RDJ allows you to get new rules, days maybe hours after a new spam sign is
> found. And these are TESTED! Not just thrown in.
I'm not sure what you're implying, that SA rules are not tested and just
thrown in updates randomly?
FWIW, sa-update lets people "get new rules, days maybe hours after a
new spam sign is found. And these are TESTED! Not just thrown in."
> Being a closed group gives us some abilities that the
> SA project will never have.
Such as? I think there some assumptions are being made that aren't
necessarily true.
> So you have 2 completely seperate ideals of rules. The method of which you
> choose, and how you aquire is up to you.
This doesn't really make a lot of sense Chris. The SA project wants to get
good rules out fast. SARE, from what you've stated, wants to get good rules
out fast. How are those "completely separate ideals of rules"?
Andy Jezierski:
> The official SA rules are meant to be used by all users. SARE on the
> other hand is "Here's the rules we have, go ahead and pick and choose what
> you'd like to use. If anything"
Sure, the current SA rules are meant to be used by all users. However,
there's nothing saying that there can't be multiple rule sets made
available, some more aggressive, or niche oriented (anti-porn, etc.)
> I think SARE can put out a new rule for a specific spam problem a lot
> faster than the SA project, so I'll have to disagree with you here.
Wow, there's so much wrapped into this statement that it's hard to figure out
what to address first.
- "put out" implies distribution, which is more of a function of how often
users check for updates than anything else since otherwise it's
people putting files on a website. ie: It doesn't matter if rules
are published every 5 minutes if people are only checking once a day.
- "put out" also implies development, which SARE probably is faster on.
The real question is: Why? My view is that it's manpower.
There's a bunch of people in SARE (I don't know the actual number)
focused on developing rules.
SpamAssassin has (according to the CREDITS file) 13 people split
between rules and code. However not all of those people are active.
Also, there tends to be more focus on the code as opposed to the rules.
For example, there were 45 commits between 7/1 and today for rules
(rulesrc/trunk) from 3 people. There were 135 commits between 7/1
and today for code (trunk) from 7 people.
So I completely disagree with your disagreement, because you said "can".
Either group can do things as fast as they have the manpower to do them.
Distribution used to be an issue for SA, but is no longer.
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