Re: [dspam-users] Dspam

Mick Johnson wrote:
> Sorry it's taken a while for me to get back to everyone on the topic of a
> Dspam fork.
>

It's good to see the response even if belatedly; I doubt I'm the only
one who hoped that the discussion about forking would solicit a response!

> Sensory Networks continues to maintain these mailing lists, the website, and
> the mirror system (currently attempting to reconnect 2 of the disconnected
> mirrors). I have 10 - 20 currently outstanding patches, depending on whether
> you count by email or section of code, and we are attempting to schedule a
> future release candidate.
>

Maintenance of the website and mailing lists is appreciated. However I
note that (unless I'm missing something) there's been no change to the
dspam website under SN's control, nor did the dspam acquisition merit
even a "Latest News" mention on SN's website, so you may appreciate the
feeling of neglect that has developed.

Regarding release candidates: the strength of open source is in the
"release early, release often" philosophy. At the very least having an
active and openly available CVS (SVN/Git/etc) repository is a minimal
requirement, I would have thought. If the standard 3.8.0 installation
procedure is "download the source, collect and apply a handful of
patches from the mailing lists, then build and install" then it's not
surprising that 3.8.0 hasn't been fully adopted.

> My understanding up until these recent discussions was that about 90% of
> users were fairly happy with 3.6.8, and a few were still testing 3.8.0. I
> therefore saw no real urgency to push out the next release candidate, which
> is likely to be 3.8.1, and still requires a high degree of testing.

I use 3.6.8 not because I don't want 3.8.0 but because I prefer to rely
on my distributions packages since in general they are well tested and
security patches are applied quickly. I also don't like installing build
tools on a production server and the easiest way to avoid that is
"apt-get install dspam".

> Of course, Dspam is much more than the code, and the collaboration of the
> community here is very important to us. Please keep the patches coming!
>

The collaboration of SN is equally important for dspam to succeed
(although rather less so for dspam-new/espam/whatever).

What version of dspam do SN use? Is it a standard 3.6.8 or 3.8.0 install
or is it "tweaked"? It's true of most open source packages that
development is done to "scratch an itch"; maybe the current releases
meet SN's needs without any changes or development, in which case I can
understand SN's lack of visible involvement recently, but if the status
quo suits SN then I would think that a fork is inevitable sooner or later.

-- 
Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0845 45 89 555
Registered in England (0456 0902) at 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG