On 6/8/2010 5:48 PM, James Ralston wrote:
> On 2010-05-21 at 03:09+02 Karsten Bräckelmann <guent...@rudersport.de> wrote:
>
>
>> 3.2.x is in maintenance, and gets emergency rule updates
>> *exclusively*. As it has been for quite a long time.
>>
>> 3.3.x uses a new rule update model, and gets frequent updates. IFF
>> the mass-check corpus is large enough.
>>
> And exactly where is this ("3.2.x gets emergency rule updates only")
> documented?
>
> It's not mentioned in the 3.3.0 or 3.3.1 release notes.
>
>
We probably should document this, as far as I know, we haven't
documented it anywhere other than various list postings (like this one).
We also very loudly repeatedly state on the list that if you want to
keep abreast of the latest spam, you need to be running the latest
version of the codebase (can't take advantage of new features without
it!), but don't have that clearly documented either.
Perhaps a pair of notes on the download page would be a good start:
Released version, 3.3.1 (recommended release for accuracy)
Previous Released version, 3.2.5 (rarely updated)
or better:
Legacy version, 3.2.5 (rarely updated)
We could also go further by creating a wiki page for the product
lifecycle, similar to the one for the rule lifecycle:
http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/RuleLifeCycle
That said it is extraordinarily common practice for open source projects
to have "legacy" releases (or as we term it on the download page
"Previous Released Version") enter a mature stage of its lifecycle with
few changes or updates. SpamAssassin conforms to this model. This may
not be the ideal version to use for spam catching, but it is there for
those who want it. I guess we've always "assumed it was obvious" that
the older codebase was in a mature lifecycle stage.
