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TMDA History
TMS
TMDA was originally modeled after a little Perl script written by Thomas
Erskine called
Tagged Mail Sender (TMS) which implemented the concept of
tagged addresses.
After using TMS for a month, I
(Jason R. Mastaler)
was thrilled with
how effective it was in reducing my spam problem, but the program was
no longer being developed or maintained. I decided to rewrite the
program from scratch and name the result TMDA. The first release of
TMDA in April 2001 was essentially a rewrite of TMS in Python, and it
grew from there.
Challenge/Response
As more people began to use TMDA, it became clear a more user-friendly
interface was needed, so a
challenge/response system was grafted
on in July of 2001. Even though TMDA implements a number of
techniques, the C/R system is generally what TMDA is known for.
While C/R systems are now commonplace, TMDA was the first
publically available program in widespread use to implement C/R
as a primary anti-spam countermeasure.
There is more to life than qmail
The next hurdle was platform independence. Like TMS, early TMDA was
strictly a qmail application. The decision was later made to add
support for the other major Unix MTAs in order to expand usage and attract
developers. This in turn would improve the overall quality of the
software. Postfix support was added in October, Exim in November, and
Sendmail and Courier in December of 2001.
The "DA" in TMDA
In 2002, the local mail delivery agent capabilities of TMDA were
greatly improved, and in fact many now use it as a clearer and simpler
alternative to Procmail or Maildrop in addition to the C/R system and other
features.
The first major release
The 1.0-final release of TMDA was made in December of 2003; the fruits
of almost three years of collaborative hacking. The primary
developers for this developent cycle were
Jason R. Mastaler and
Tim Legant,
with nods to the contributors mentioned in
THANKS
and many others
who provided feedback, bug reports, and invaluable suggestions.
The 1.0.x releases are considered stable and reliable, and in fact are
in use at many sites in a production level capacity.
Tomorrow never dies
The envelope continues to be pushed in TMDA 1.1.x, a new development cycle,
which will untimately lead to another stable release, TMDA 1.2.
Currently TMDA 1.1.x should be considered "alpha" level software because it
is evolving rapidly. Features and functionality are continually being
added, reevaluated and improved, and subtle changes may appear between
releases. Jason R. Mastaler
remains TMDA maintainer.
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