Re: Spam admin autoresponder (was Re: mutt question)
On Mon, 11 Dec 2000 kmself@ix.netcom.com wrote:
[ clarification; I am the author of spam.pl ]
> I've been looking at both Ricochet and spam.pl over the past week, here's
> my evaluation. Corrections and/or comments welcomed.
[snip]
> - spam.pl is more elegantly put together and more usefully commented.
> Use of command-line options is closer to GNU/Linux standards than
> ricochet. These differences make me more inclined to work with
> spam.pl than ricochet if I want to modify a script. spam.pl also
> appears to be in current development, while ricochet's been static
> for over a year. On the other hand, ricochet appears to do more of
> the right things. And I really don't know Perl that well, but we
> can get over this.
I would like to point out a few facts about spam.pl and why it behaves as it
does: I felt an itch and I scratched it. I never planned or intended to write
the perfect spam complainer. I do encourage everyone interested in seeing
changes to subscribe to the mailing list, post patches and discuss new ideas.
Any programmer can learn perl fairly swiftly, it could even be a good
opportunity to get to know it!
> - Both systems appear to allow specifying of specific additional
> addresses to send the spam message to. In ricochet, the complaint
> letter includes headers, it's trivial to add specified addresses to
> these for receipt or cc.
Adding headers to that file, or have the custom headers in a separate file
would be dead-easy to add.
> - Interactive mode for both programs needs help.
Yeah, spam.pl was supposed to get one but it doesn't currently work.
> - ricochet has a cooler name. On a serious note, spam.pl really ought
> to be called something like "spamresponse", "spamtattler", or
> something indicative of its use as a spam _retaliation_ tool.
I couldn't agree more. But I'm a poor sod with a total lack of imagination!
:-)
> - Ability to run the scripts against an 'mbox'-style mail file or to
> pipe through a set of tagged messages from mutt. Currently both
> tools only accept a single email as input. The ability to batch and
> background mass responses would be helpful, particularly if more
> intensive research mechanisms such as whois and traceroute lookups
> are used.
I can't see this being very tricky to add.
As a conclusion:
Yes, spam.pl is "actively" being developed. It does however fill my needs
pretty good, so I haven't felt much need to add features. Unfortunately, not
many other people have contributed with new features either and thus not many
new things have been added recently.
Obviously, you have a lot of good ideas of what a program like this should
contain. You, and other interested people, are warmly welcome to join the
spam.pl development and turn it into that perfect tool it could become. Yes,
I'll be happy to change the name!
http://spam.sourceforge.net/
--
Daniel Stenberg - http://daniel.haxx.se - +46-705-44 31 77
ech`echo xiun|tr nu oc|sed 'sx\([sx]\)\([xoi]\)xo un\2\1 is xg'`ol
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