Apache SpamAssassin report to Board for December 2020

SpamAssassin is a mail filter to identify spam. The project provides a framework/engine and regular rule updates that reflect the changing nature of spam email seen in the wild. Updated rules are generated through a combination of hand crafted contributions and automated processing of spam and anonymized processed non-spam that are contributed by volunteers.

Status and health report:

The project activities, including running our rule update infrastructure and our dev and user mailing lists, are continuing smoothly.

SpamAssassin 3.4.4 was released on 28 January, 2020. It was primarily a security release, fixing two CVEs, all then known outstanding open security issues on the project.

Release of SpamAssassin 3.4.5 is imminent, fixing a subsequently reported CVE level security issue.  3.4.5 Pre-Release 1 was built on June 21, 2020.

We intend to return our primary focus to development of version 4.0.0.  A Pre-Release 1 of 4.0.0 is planned.

Releases:

The last release was Apache SpamAssassin version 3.4.4 on 28 January 2020.

Note that we maintain online rule updates that are continuously updated through a combination of developer contributions and automated processing via our mass-check facility.

Committer/PMC changes:

Most recent new committer:

Paul Stead (pds) 12 September 2018

Most recent new PMC members:

Giovanni Bechis (gbechis) 24 Sep 2018

Henrik Krohns (hege) 25 Sep 2018