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The Apache Software Foundation Announces Apache SpamAssassin Version 3.3.0
Leading Open Source Email Filtering Package Offers First Major Code Release Since 2007
FOREST HILL, MD – 26 January, 2010 – The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) today announced the release of Apache SpamAssassin 3.3.0, the first major code release from the Apache SpamAssassin Project since May 2007. Apache SpamAssassin v3.3.0 marks the Project's 4th major (and 24th overall release) since the SpamAssassin Project joined the ASF in December 2003.
Apache SpamAssassin is an award winning, mature, wide-spectrum, extensible email filtering package deployed by hundreds of thousands of organizations world-wide.
"Apache SpamAssassin is the leading Open Source email spam filtering software package that is in use by national, regional and local ISPs, email service providers, Fortune Global 500 companies, small to enterprise businesses, all levels of the education sector, governments and private individuals," said Daryl C. W. O'Shea, Chair of the Apache SpamAssassin Project Management Committee (PMC) and Information Technology Coordinator at the Township of Tay in Ontario, Canada. "SpamAssassin is also in use at the core of many commercial offerings of premier email and spam filtering firms: with its automatic update feature, sa-update, SpamAssassin now not only saves the time of end-users, it saves the time of email administrators, further increasing the software's ROI. We're very proud that SpamAssassin has become the standard for extensible and effective spam filtering software."
Apache SpamAssassin 3.3.0 represents a major shift in how SpamAssassin rules (the actual patterns that help to identify spam) are updated. Starting with version 3.3.0, rules are now separate from the core product and are instead downloaded using "sa-update", SpamAssassin's automatic update software. This method was optional with the 3.2.x series of releases and has proven to be very popular.
SpamAssassin provides a comprehensive set of features and support for methods and standards such as text based patterns, bayesian scoring, DNS based black and white lists, DKIM and SPF sender authentication, and email signature clearing houses. The software utilizes a principle of identifying multiple reasons for classifying an email as spam to improve accuracy and decrease the chance of legitimate emails being incorrectly identified as spam.
Les Tutkaluke, President of netGUARD Solutions said, "NetGUARD Solutions has been utilizing SpamAssassin for 8 years starting with version 1.0. The advanced e-mail scanning functions within the processing engines of netGUARD Solutions manages in excess of 75 million messages per day for our vast customer subscriber base. SpamAssassin is an integral and admirable addition to our filtering system and is a significant part of the accurate identification of unwanted e-mail. The success of netGUARD Solutions is directly tied to SpamAssassin and the solid programming within it."
"Over the past 365 days, SpamAssassin has blocked 516,975 unsolicited junk mails while letting through 85,032 clean ones. Without SpamAssassin email would simply be unusable. It is an essential component to our business activities," said Jean-Yves Avenard, SysAdmin at Hydrix Pty Ltd, Australia.
Released under the Apache Software Licence v2.0, Apache SpamAssassin 3.3.0 can be downloaded at http://spamassassin.apache.org/; additional user reviews and industry testimonials are available at http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/Testimonials
About The Apache Software Foundation (ASF)
Established in 1999, the all-volunteer Foundation oversees more than seventy leading Open Source projects, including Apache HTTP Server — the world's most popular Web server software. Through The ASF's meritocratic process known as "The Apache Way," nearly 300 individual Members and 2,000 Committers successfully collaborate to develop freely available enterprise-grade software, benefiting millions of users worldwide: thousands of software solutions are distributed under the Apache License; and the community actively participates in ASF mailing lists, mentoring initiatives, and ApacheCon, the Foundation’s official user conference, trainings, and expo. The ASF is funded by individual donations and corporate sponsors including Facebook, Google, HP, Microsoft, Progress Software, SpringSource/VMware, and Yahoo! For more information, visit http://www.apache.org/.
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The Apache Software Foundation Announces Apache Pivot as Top-Level Project
FOREST HILL, MD – 19 January, 2010 – The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) today announced the graduation of Apache Pivot as a Top-Level Project (TLP), signifying that the Project's community and products have been well-governed under the ASF's meritocratic process and principles. In addition, the Project announced the release of Apache Pivot 1.4, the fourth update since joining the Apache Incubator in January 2009.
Apache Pivot is a platform for building rich Internet applications (RIAs) in Java. It combines the enhanced productivity and usability features of a modern RIA toolkit with the robustness of the industry-standard Java platform. Pivot provides a foundation upon which sophisticated and engaging applications can be easily built and deployed over the Web. Because Pivot applications are written in Java, they can take full advantage of the comprehensive feature set and extensive industry support of the Java platform.
"Users have much higher expectations for Web applications now than they did 10 years ago," said Greg Brown, Chair of the Apache Pivot Project Management Committee (PMC) and Principal Consultant at Cantina Consulting. "This is why we're seeing tools like Flex and Silverlight beginning to gain traction; however, both of these require developers who are otherwise happy using Java to switch technologies. Pivot is an attempt to create a modern, rich client development platform in Java."
Pivot provides a comprehensive set of standard user interface elements ranging from simple buttons to editable tree and table controls. It also includes a number of features that significantly simplify development of modern GUI applications, including an XML markup language for declaring the structure of a user interface, data binding, animated effects and transitions, and Web services integration.
"I've tried the demos and I was stunned," said Pivot user Trelieux Einagen. "The framework uses easy to understand markup for the applet front end while at the same time taking advantage of the power of Java for business logic and server side processing...I think the Java community in general is fortunate enough to have those guys at Pivot stand up and build something that can actually compete RIGHT NOW with the likes of Flash/Flex and Microsoft Silverlight/WPF without losing your sanity."
Pivot user Scott Lanham said, "The current default theme has a nice clean look and feel...I am impressed with the good selection of widgets. They appear to cover just about every need of an application...Well done with Pivot!"
"Thank you guys with coming up with Pivot," said Java developer and Pivot user N. Forbes. "Java really, really needs a smooth, coherent RIA next generation framework to 'seriously' compete with the likes of Flex and SilverLight/WPF...I saw someone comment on the Pivot Framework that it leverages existing Java skills to make the transition to the framework as seamless as possible. I looked at the source code and screamed out in joy: you guys may actually end up bailing out the Java RIA from pure academic obscurity and back into the more popular sphere of mind."
Apache Pivot 1.4 is released under the Apache Software License v2.0 and can be downloaded at http://pivot.apache.org/.
About The Apache Software Foundation (ASF)
Established in 1999, the all-volunteer Foundation oversees more than seventy leading Open Source projects, including Apache HTTP Server — the world's most popular Web server software. Through The ASF's meritocratic process known as "The Apache Way," nearly 300 individual Members and 2,000 Committers successfully collaborate to develop freely available enterprise-grade software, benefiting millions of users worldwide: thousands of software solutions are distributed under the Apache License; and the community actively participates in ASF mailing lists, mentoring initiatives, and ApacheCon, the Foundation’s official user conference, trainings, and expo. The ASF is funded by individual donations and corporate sponsors including Facebook, Google, HP, Microsoft, Progress Software, SpringSource/VMware, and Yahoo! For more information, visit http://www.apache.org/.
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The Apache Software Foundation Welcomes Facebook as its Newest Sponsor
The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) is excited to welcome Facebook as the newest addition to our roster of sponsors.
Sponsoring the ASF helps us grow existing projects, incubate new initiatives, promote community development, host user events, expand our outreach, and provide the infrastructure that keeps the Foundation running on a day-to-day basis. We are grateful for the generous support of Facebook as Gold Sponsors.
With Open Source in its DNA, Facebook is an enthusiastic champion and active contributor to the ASF, including the Hive subproject of Apache Hadoop, as well as the popular incubating projects Thrift and Cassandra – all originally developed at Facebook.
Facebook joins ASF Platinum Sponsors Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo!; Gold Sponsor Hewlett-Packard; Silver Sponsors Progress Software and Springsource/VMWare; and Bronze Sponsors BlueNog, Intuit, Joost, and Matt Mullenweg.
NOTICE: Apache SpamAssassin Y2K10 Rule Bug - Update Your Rules Now!
I've posted the following note on the Apache SpamAssassin website [1] about an issue with a rule that may cause wanted email to be classified as spam by SpamAssassin. If you're running SpamAssassin 3.2.x you are encouraged to update you rules (updates were released on sa-update around 1900 UTC Jan 1, 2010).
Y2K10 Rule Bug - Update Your Rules Now!
2010-01-01:
Versions of the FH_DATE_PAST_20XX [2] rule released with versions of Apache SpamAssassin 3.2.0 thru 3.2.5 will trigger on most mail with a Date header that includes the year 2010 or later. The rule will add a score of up to 3.6 towards the spam classification of all email. You should take corrective action immediately; there are two easy ways to correct the problem:
1) If your system is configured to use sa-update [3] run sa-update now. An update is available that will correct the rule. No further action is necessary (other than restarting spamd or any service that uses SpamAssassin directly).
2) Add "score FH_DATE_PAST_20XX 0" without the quotes to the end of your local.cf file to disable the rule. If you require help updating your rules to correct this issue you are encouraged to ask for assistance on the Apache SpamAssassin Users' list. Users' mailing list info is here. [4]
On behalf of the Apache SpamAssassin project I apologize for this error and the grief it may have caused you.
[1] http://spamassassin.apache.org/
[2] http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/Rules/FH_DATE_PAST_20XX
[3] http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/RuleUpdates
[4] http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/MailingLists
If it's not at apache.org, it's not from the Apache Software Foundation!
The rule is very simple: if a website is not hosted on an apache.org domain, it's not a website of the ASF (with a few exceptions, see below).
In other words, if the site's address doesn't end with .apache.org, it's not ours. Note the dot before apache.org: fooapache.org or apachefoo.org wouldn't belong to us, whereas foo.apache.org does.
The only exceptions to that rule are apachecon.com, which is jointly managed between
the ASF and companies producing our conferences, and spamassassin.org and myfaces.org, for historical reasons.
So remember: if it's not at apache.org or one of the three above domains, it's not from us!