Distributed reputation system project announcement

Tue Jun 22 17:16:17 PDT 2004

Given the recent discussion of reputation systems in various anti-spam
fora, I've decided to finally start working on my distributed reputation
system in earnest.  The working title for the project is: Gossip
Optimized for Selective Spam Prevention (GOSSiP).

There's a website that details the current concepts at
http://sufficiently-advanced.net .  Please don't take the first
three documents as indicative of the current thinking; they're more
than a year old and the idea has evolved since then.  What's described
on the main page should be thought of as current.

There's a mailing list set up (via mailman) to which interested
people can subscribe:
https://secure.roadtoad.net/mailman/listinfo/gossip  

There's also some extremely early skeleton code on the
sufficiently-advanced page (a skeleton sendmail milter and
threaded GOSSiP server, both in C).

I'd invite anyone interested in being involved in the project,
particularly those who'd like to help develop the code, to
subscribe to the mailing list.

Who's needed:  Besides people willing to give general input and test, we
could use people familiar with implementing SSL sockets in C; people
familiar with interfacing code with database backends; people familiar
with writing add-ons to various MTAs (sendmail, postfix, exim, qmail)
and spam filters (spamassassin being the primary focus right now).

There's already a skeleton sendmail milter in C, and the beginnings
of the standalone server.  The project's just beginning, so there's
enough for everyone who wants to contribute.

-- 
Mark C. Langston                                    Sr. Unix SysAdmin
mark at bitshift.org                                       mark at seti.org
Systems & Network Admin                                SETI Institute
http://bitshift.org                               http://www.seti.org