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Message-ID: <3A21A43E.AC1FCB7F@ece.gatech.edu>
Date: Sun, 26 Nov 2000 19:01:02 -0500
From: "Charles S. Wilson" <cwilson AT ece DOT gatech DOT edu>
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To: Chris Abbey <cabbey AT bresnanlink DOT net>
CC: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: Subscribers to cygwin mailing list can post regardless ofspam blocks
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Note-from-DJ: This may be spam

Alright. It's finally time for me to weigh in on this.  

 1) I hate spam.
 2) I report every spam I get using spamcop.
 3) My ISP is Comcast AT home.  They are clueless.  
 4) Fighting SPAM is costing me FAR more time than just hitting the
delete key
 5) I contribute a lot to this project and this list.  But I have been
on the brink of signing off for good and doing 'rm -rf' of my whole
cygwin installation more than once.  Because of ORBS.

When comcast first got put on the ORBS list -- it was their own fault. 
Their servers were acting as open relays.  It took me months to get them
to fix that, but I finally succeeded.  In the interim, I had to use a
separate ISP just for posting to cygwin.

So, comcast's servers are now properly configured.  However, about every
week, yet another of comcast's servers gets put on the ORBS list as an
"exit point" -- because some stupid *customer* set up a mail server
improperly.  Suppose 'Joe', a comcast customer, sets up a relaying mail
server.  It should most certainly be added to the ORBS open-relay list.  

I do not use Joe's mail server, but Joe and I both use mail.comcast as
our output mail server, (his smarthosts through it, I use it directly). 
HE has caused mail.comcast, in addition to his own machine, to be added
to the list -- his machine is added to the open-relay list, while
mail.comcast is added to the 'smarthost exit point' list.  This means
that I and my ISP, through no fault of our own, are being punished for
Joe's action.  Punish Joe and Joe's users, not me!

Yes, I can and do complain to comcast, and report Joe.  They threaten
him with disconnecting his service, and in about a week mail.comcast is
removed from ORBS' smarthost exit point list.  Just in time for Suzy to
start the whole thing over again with HER improperly configured mail
server.

Each time this happens, I'm knocked off the list for a week.  (So I have
to use an alternate ISP to post).  Worse, it takes about a half hour to
compose the report to comcast -- you always have to start at the
beginning, explain ORBS and what it is, and how Joe is violating the AUP
and how I'm being denied the service I paid for, etc etc.  You have to
do all the reverse-IP mapping yourself -- if you don't do all this, they
won't fix it.  So, each report is basically custom written.  I do NOT
have time for that.  Sorry.

So, I am GLAD I am not going to be bounced off the list -- once a week
-- for a period of about a week at a time.  (Do the math; that means
permenantly).  The alternative is for me to
  1) abandon cygwin
  2) abandon this list
  3) abandon maintainership for the following official packages:
zlib
libpng
jpeg
libjbig
tiff
gdbm
cvs
gettext
xpm
ncurses
bzip2
  4) shut down the cygutils site.

So, yeah, ORBS can modify my behavior -- but not in any way you'd like.

My biggest beef is not with ORBS' open relay database, actually; that
part, I like.  My problem is with the ORBS 'smarthost exit point'
database; that part is terrible.

--Chuck Wilson


Chris Abbey wrote:
> 
> At 17:19 11/26/00 -0500, DJ Delorie wrote:
> >ORBS blocks spam.  Anything else is just a beneficial side-effect.
> 
> That's a very selfish view DJ, ORBS is the "Open Relay
> Behaviour-modification System". It's named for what it
> hopes to accomplish: behaviour-modification. If you happen
> to find the side effect of reducing spam more attractive
> then the main purpose, perhaps you'd be better served by
> some thing like the "Mail Abuse Prevention System" which
> has a clearly stated purpose of preventing abuse. For those
> that want further reading on the differences see
> http://www.orbs.org/ and http://maps.vix.com/.
>

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