[vexim] Time to ditch SA/DSPAM?

[Burnie]

Avleen Vig <lists-vexim at silverwraith.com> wrote:

> For a few months now, I've been using a product called TrafficControl
> from MailChannels. I know the guys who wrote it and they're a pretty
> solid bunch.
> 
> It works so well for me, that SA and DSPAM catch less than one spam a
> day per account now. As a result, I've turned them off here.
> 
> I thought you guys might want to know about this too :)
> http://www.mailchannels.com/
> 
> Before release they were going to charge or the product, but it's now
> free for non-commercial users, and free for any use if you get less than
> 10k connections a day.
> 
> Let me know if you try it and what you think of it.

Ok, I downloaded it today to see what it was all about.

My first thought was that a lot of the files are encrypted or binary.

How do I know TC is doing what it is supposed to do, and not something
else? I suppose most people won't bother to decrypt and decode the
files to make sure it's not harmful code in there somewhere.

If you're gonna run this at port 25, you'll need priviledged access
on the machine, and I don't give it to anybody/-thing.

And how could I apply local patches if things don't work as planned.
How do I get TC to understand that a particular type of mail
isn't spam, and are supposed to be accepted?
Does TC allow for special/local rules or learning?


My second thought was that since a lot of the bundled files are
compiled, I couldn't run it on any mailserver I'd choose. I would 
probably have to use a recent kernel and glibc to get it running.
And my mailserver would certainly exceed the limit for free use,
so it doesn't look very interesting at the moment...


Then I looked further into the TC bundle.
It also contains a lot of GPL'ed (and alike) software and modules.
That's good, I thought.

But wait a minute. If it's bundled with GPL'ed software, where's 
the GPL licence? And where's the source code?

They are actually selling this to companies, and charging them for 
an unknown amount of money, and a lot of the software they sell are
developed by other people?

IANAL, but I seriously doubt they are entitled to distribute TC the 
way they are. 

All honors to the developers, they probably have made a good and
working product. But when you're distributing software, and at least
when you're selling it, you probably should have covered all your 
bases - in advance.


My conclusion is that TC isn't for me. 
It's not tweakable enough for my needs, it doesn't run on all 
my platforms, and it is (probably) violating GPL.
I think I'll stick to open source rather than a black (or grey) 
box. :)

-- 
Bernt  'Burnie'  Pettersen  ///  DoD#2345     
<E-mail:burnie at dod.no>     ///  <URL:http://burnie.sh/>
     -  If today is the first day of the rest of your life,
                 what the hell was yesterday?   -