Mouss,
mouss wrote:
It's more than a "common user" question. while I can build an
*BSD/Debian/Centos box to do what I want, I did buy "COTS" firewalls,
backup servers, ... etc.
You're not talking about ease of setup, you're talking about quality and
reliability of product. Spamassassin doesn't require constant
attention. It has never caused a problem for me. But if you are wiling
to ensure your rulesets are updating properly and plugins are working,
(in addition to occasionally evaluating new plugins), you can keep your
performance remarkably high.
But that's the name of the game in this particular world. Spammers
change tactics.
I personally don't like being called when on vacation, and more
importantly, I don't want a company to "rely" on me. Not only for
"loyalty", but also because I want to be able to quit when I want.
I don't know how to respond to his other than "well, duh." No sysadmin
worth his or her salt will throw a poor solution in place that would be
either:
(1) difficult for future admins to maintain or
(2) cause an unreasonable amount of unexpected maintenance.
That's why you document the work you do and you stick with known, proven
solutions where possible. Spamassassin happens to be the best, most
reliable anti-spam solution I've come across, which is why I use it.
And I've clashed with an awful lot of poor spam solutions.
I will agree with you that you have to spend real money to do a lot of
things well -- backups are a perfect example of this -- and in many
cases you can compress time and effort with money. But in the case of
spam tagging/filtering, you're often not getting what you think you're
getting with commercial anti-spam solutions. Choose carefully.
there's a common misconception about tools (software or hardware): the
out of the box syndrom. some people think that they will "put it in and
everything will go on" <words cut>
I suggested that commercial software is often misconfigured out of the
box and even provided a concrete example. Where did I say it would just
work?
Best,
Jesse
