95% Spam

From O’Reilly’s Radar, 95% of their incoming mail is spam: Another War We’re Not Winning: Us vs Spam.

  • 829,890 SMTP connections made to our two gateway mail servers
  • 904060 attempted message deliveries
  • 49194 messages accepted (I think this is actually a little high due to a configuration problem with our Zimbra server.)
  • 94.6% of all messages were rejected

I thought this was the most interesting comment for Paul Vixe:

every potential smtp improvement or replacement that could do anything to actually stop spam, has been systematically patented. the crap that’s left isn’t going to do any good. we’re headed for walled gardens.

If SMTP had been patented, modern email might have been still born. By extension the digital commons created with SMTP is now suffering greatly because software patents prevent better usage models.

Balancing the need of innovation against public good is hard, however 20 years+ for a software patent is just too long.

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