Slashdot Mirror
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!"
all this inferior technology?
McAfee bought SpamKiller a number of months back. I actually paid for that thing back when it was just a shareware project. Big money came in, updates stopped...
Now they buy SpamAssassin, great! I actually used it after getting rid of SpamKiller, and it was OK-ish, but it bothered the hell out of me that I had no control over what's spam and what's not, except for a sender black- and whitelist. (Which sometimes does not work for mailing lists, some of the ones I'm on have date-specific senders such as blahblah-digest-20021220@blahblah.com.)
I switched to POPFile like two months ago, and never looked back. 97.8% accuracy and increasing, yay!
I assume Deersoft is the company that released regular SpamAsassin under GPL. In this case, I don't think they can remove GPL from any part of the code, including it's name. If they just used GPL code from other people, they would have to either release source code for the PRO version or license the original one separately. Even then, GPL license would still protect everyone's right to use the name. Not a lawyer, just seems common sense.
I hope the name SpamAssassin is all they have the rights to. It seems like there might be some messy legal issues here.
Also, if this goes as mainstream as it looks like it's going, we might need a different open-source spam filter after all - because NAI's product will be the one the spammers will be testing on and trying to get past.
OTOH, maybe NAI throwing money at this will make ISPs everywhere notice and start taking spam a bit more seriously.
Anyway, while it lasts, SpamAssassin (or whatever we call it) is excellent. The new Bayesian filtering in the upcoming 2.50 is working wonders.
It's Slashdot's evil twin... SlashNOT
I bought a copy to use at home and 30 licenses for the office. The stuff works good.
They've continued to update the program and add more features. I get 50-100 spams per day and the program might miss one of them.
I hope they are getting a nice tasty payout from Network Associates.
nuclear iraq bioweapon encryption cocaine korea terrorist
There's a reason for this. And it's a legal minefield. Companies could sue NAI (McAfee) for detecting this software and removing it, and some AV company (I forget which, but probably H+BEDV) was sued recently by a German company that made porn dialers, because it was detecting them... Add in FBI-esque eBugs, and boy is it a spikey issue.
Score:-1, Funny
An NAI story
"Hello, we're using the free version of PGP in testing and have decided to use it in production, what do we need to license this from you?" Sales moron takes information and says, 'I'll get back to you in a bit.'
Guy calls back threatening a lawsuit if we don't buy the 'Enterprise' edition of the product that only runs on Windows (We needed only the version for Solaris). This continues with more and more strongarmed tactics including phone spamming all of our corporate directory with their threats.
It took telling the guy that he was too close to our office to keep running on at the mouth like he was and that he had better serve papers or look over his shoulder durning lunch hour if he continued calling.
NAI uses mafia tactics to sell their broken down product line, the faster people can boycott them the better off we all will be. I have never sold another NAI product to any of my clients as a result.
May as well change the name now just to avoid the annoying threats that will ensue. NAI you are despicable, a stand-out in a sea of detritus. Congratulations on what will be the ruin of another great product.