spf-discuss
[Top] [All Lists]

SPF-Enabled open-source product announcement and request-for-input: Generic anti-spam platform

2004-10-01 18:40:12
I have budgeted and contracted workers to build a generic (free)
Win32/Unix/Mac multilingual anti-spam open-source GUI "platform"
product - the point of which will be to provide a standard interface
to producers of anti-spam technologies.

It operates as one (or simultaneously 2 or more) of either:
 * a native email plugin to popular email products (eg: outlook /
   outlook express)
 * a transparent proxy (intercepting POP / SMTP / webmail traffic
   streams)
 * a traditional proxy (requiring email client adjustments to POP/SMTP
   servers)
 * a serverside multiuser POP/SMTP "front-end" (interface to existing
   back-end servers, or, called-out-to by existing servers)

The "platform" itself does nothing more than provide the installation,
message handling, and GUI interaction for anti-spam technologies.
Vendors of antispam ideas can distribute or sell "plug-ins" for this
platform confident in the knowledge that their code will work for all
major email programs and webmail services on all popular operating
systems (either on the client-end or server-side), *and* that their
anti-spam code will interoperate correctly with other vendor antispam
code and antivirus products etc. 

This "platform" is either a client (end user) "download", or a server
(ISP installed) component.

This posting is to solicit comments and suggestions.  My staff have
just worked their first month on this project, and I'm looking out to
make sure that nothing has been overlooked before significant amounts
of coding begin. 

The general intent is to provide a set of simple and standard
interfaces allowing antispam technologies access to the various stages
of email receiving and sending, along with simple standard means to
allow settings configuration and email message handling, presented in
a high-quality professional GUI frontend.

Please reply (on or off-list). All comments are welcome. I'm
specifically looking for anything anti-spam-technology-related that
might not fit into the "intercept receiving and sending" concept in
case there's a way we can code support for these kinds of plugins too.
If you're a builder of anti-spam code and would like us to ensure our
platform will support your own ideas, you're welcome to send us a URL
or your ideas.  We've done a reasonably comprehensive survey of what's
out there already, but I do notice a lot of new stuff on this list
that we didn't unearth through Google, so this might be your last
chance, especially if you're thinking "way out of the square".

Kind Regards,
Chris Drake.


<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>