In the immortal words of measl@mfn.org (measl@mfn.org):
So we have a choice: pay for the (very nice but expensive) commercial product, or add forty percent to our mail spool disk farm and extra cpus and ram in the mail server farm to deal with the additional influx. In the numbers we're talking about, bandwidth costs become measurable too.
Whether we like it or not however, this is a cost of doing business now, and is a normal part of determining your cost of goods sold (at least it *should* be).
We can grit our teeth and make that statement now, when spam is (handwave, guess, maybe) 30% of our incoming mail load. It's going to become a lot harder to make as that percentage approaches 99. Which it will, and probably sooner than any of us want to think about. Even the most naive of IT managers will, after a few rounds of budgeting, notice that red ink is hemorrhaging from a single line-item, and take steps to correct it. We are rapidly approaching the point where ANY alternative to SMTP is going to start looking _very_ attractive to the people who sign our paychecks. When that point is reached, they will very likely grab at the first product available that looks like it will still allow them to communicate with a large fraction of their customers. If we would prefer that product _not_ to be based on MSN, Passport and Hailstorm (or whatever half-baked alternative Sun and AOL cook up), it would behoove us to start work on an open, standardized, IETF-sanctioned solution sooner rather than later. Just sayin, -n -----------------------------------------------------------<memory@blank.org> "`G.I. Jane' is a demeaning, violent, bloody workout video. Some brief nudity, bad language and a false sense of human resilience. Rated R." (--CNN) <http://blank.org/memory/>---------------------------------------------------