The field-proven, cost-effective MailWasher Server email management and security solution is now available as an open source project platform. Firetrust Limited, provider of award-winning anti-spam and email security solutions, today announced the availability of MailWasher® Server as an open source software project.

Available for worldwide download from http://oss.firetrust.com , MailWasher Server Open Source represents a new generation in antispam technology. MailWasher Server Open Source is an highly-effective email antispam solution for small to mid-sized businesses and large enterprises and offers a polished, well-integrated web interface and built-in quarantine management facility.

Built for and optimized to run on Linux, Solaris and Windows servers, the application adopts a multi-layered approach to identifying and quarantining spam messages before unwanted or malicious emails ever enter an organization’s network. The result is an antispam solution on a par with all currently available applications, however without the high cost of ownership of proprietary systems.

Designed to increase efficiency and effectiveness of email, MailWasher Server benefits an entire organization by reducing the burden on IT administrators, giving employees better control, increasing worker productivity, and most importantly, cutting costs.

“We recognize most antispam technology originates from open source projects, and believe in contributing to the knowledge with tools we have developed, helps stop the spam plague and enhances the email experience for everyone,” said Nick Bolton, CEO of Firetrust. “A key benefit to MailWasher Server Open Source is that the collaboration created from the open source development community will make antispam solutions better, more stable, highly scalable and developed faster to benefit all users.”

Commercial open source applications will dramatically change the antispam application market. “When you build a commercial grade antispam application utilizing the combined ideas and resources from developers across the globe, you simply develop a better, more revolutionary product than any one proprietary software can build on its own,” says Nick Bolton. “We believe our open source business model is far more efficient than the classic approach to building proprietary antispam software. Our customers have full access to our source code, our bug lists, and our feature roadmap and can even contribute to the code themselves. This is how great products are developed today and I have no doubt will be well into the future,” says Nick Bolton. ailWasher Server Open Source is released under both the General Public License (GPL) and a variation of the Mozilla Public License 1.1 (Firetrust Public License – FPL) to enable developers to have a high degree of freedom but preserve compatibility and inter-operability.

System Requirements and Availability
MailWasher Server Open Source is available for Windows, Solaris and Linux environments, integrating with current versions of Sendmail, Qmail and Microsoft Exchange. MailWasher Server Open Source is now shipping and available directly from Firetrust oss.firetrust.com.

About Firetrust Limited
Established in 2000, Firetrust provides world-class e-mail security products for business and home users. Firetrust delivers solutions across the spectrum of inbox protection, including MailWasher® Pro for unsolicited commercial e-mail (spam) and Benign® for neutralizing harmful e-mail that can contain viruses, worms, scripts and Web bugs. The company is privately held and headquartered in Christchurch, New Zealand. To date Firetrust’s flagship product MailWasher, has had more than 5 million downloads. For more information, please visit www.firetrust.com.

- Christchurch, New Zealand.