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Network Associates Aquires Deersoft Inc.
Duncan Findlay writes "Network Associates Inc. has just
acquired Deersoft, Inc., which is known by many as the creator of SpamAssassin Pro, the proprietary (Windows) version of the GPL/PAL licensed SpamAssassin (Mirrors: Eastern US, Europe). It seems that we may see parts of SpamAssassin under the McAfee name within 6 months. You can also read the story at Yahoo or at Reuters. Unfortunately, the SpamAssassin trademark was owned by Deersoft, so hypothetically, NAI could force us to call the Open Source project something else!"
www.cloudmark.com
SpamNet is actually somewhat better at intelligently filtering out trash.
Working link.
Some would say it's already dead. In any case, Spybot Search and Destroy is better for now.
I think Hormel said that it's OK to use spam to refer to unsolicited email, but not SPAM (all caps), which refers to the canned food product.
I don't know about the legal status of it though. Probably just a courtesy.
Requirements
* Windows 98 / NT / 2000 / XP
* Outlook 2000 / XP
* 1mb disk space
Um. Yeah.... Now all I need to do is get a Windows box and then install outlook. Think I'll stick to SpamAssassin, Procmail and POPFile.
Not to dis your support of the Deersoft guys, which is great, but if you are running 30 copies in the office why not simply use the GPL version on your mail server? The great thing about SpamAssassin (GPL version) is that it can simply mark the headers of spam so users can have their own rules for whitelists, deleting it or moving it to special folders.
Assuming anything happens on the trademark front Deersoft owning the SpamAssassin trademark is relatively pointless. IIRC Spamassassin was called spamassassin long before deersoft registered the trademark, or even considered a windows version. Use of a trademark prior to it being registered is a vaild defense against a trademark infringement cliam, and can actually should the spamassassin folks choose be grounds to have deersoft's trademark squashed.
With apologies to the many who have contributed to SA in the past, Spamassassin was basically the work of three people. Craig, Justin and Matt. Between the three of them that's the *vast* majority of the work that was done on that project.
Here's the troubling part.
Craig and Justin owned the trademark and now work for NAI on the proprietary version (to be named "SpamKiller" apparently) and Matt's company has pulled him off because there is a conflict of interest in having him work on open source being fed back into NAI.
So the three captains of this project are now gone. This doesn't bode well for the future of SA.
Sucks.
The SpamAssasssin open-source project is licensed under the "same license as Perl itself" -- ie a dual PAL/GPL where the licensee can choose which license they wish to use. Deersoft used the open-source engine as the spam-identification component of (at time of acquisition) two products: an Outlook plugin, and an Exchange server plugin. There's a lot of windows/outlook/exchange-specific code in there which is covered under a commercial (not currently open-source) license, and these parts of the software are kept quite separate from the open-source bits.
We're currently floating between meeting after meeting after meeting with the Network Associates folks, trying to nail down timelines, roadmaps, etc. and will have more information hopefully soon.
Through the merger process, one of my main concerns was trying to ensure the preservation and independence of all aspects of the open source project. This was partially reflected in the press release announcing the acquisition, but I think that was written by a marketroid who doesn't necessarily understand what Open Source even means.
If you want to contact me directly, please email me at craig@deersoft.com or craig@hughes-family.org and I'll try and get answers to any questions you may have -- be warned though that NAI is a large company with the typical slowness associated with large organizations.
Craig Hughes