Just wanted to hop on to say hello and inform the community that I support Scott's solution as the successor to efa-project.org.
Although it was a successful project, eFa was plagued with using legacy software that has shown its age. I did not have time to invest in making the big changes needed to overcome this problem. At the heart of eFa was MailScanner and MailWatch, projects I was also developing for and was at the heart of eFa. MailScanner depends on legacy unmaintained and undermaintained perl modules dating back decades, making the software fragile and susceptible to future issues using those modules. MailWatch is entirely a frontend to MailScanner, so both projects are inexorably linked. They will live together and die together.
Keeping eFa alive in my hands would have meant keeping the status quo, lacking the innovation and big changes needed for the community to move forward. Thanks to Scott stepping up, the community can now move forward with a new and superior solution.
shawniverson wrote: Sun Nov 09, 2025 5:21 pm
Hello,
Just wanted to hop on to say hello and inform the community that I support Scott's solution as the successor to efa-project.org.
Although it was a successful project, eFa was plagued with using legacy software that has shown its age. I did not have time to invest in making the big changes needed to overcome this problem. At the heart of eFa was MailScanner and MailWatch, projects I was also developing for and was at the heart of eFa. MailScanner depends on legacy unmaintained and undermaintained perl modules dating back decades, making the software fragile and susceptible to future issues using those modules. MailWatch is entirely a frontend to MailScanner, so both projects are inexorably linked. They will live together and die together.
Keeping eFa alive in my hands would have meant keeping the status quo, lacking the innovation and big changes needed for the community to move forward. Thanks to Scott stepping up, the community can now move forward with a new and superior solution.
Thank you so much for taking the time to post this. Your support means a great deal to me and to everyone who has relied on eFa over the years. You’ve carried this project on your back for a long time, and your honesty about the challenges with the legacy codebase is exactly why the community respects you.
My goal with OpenEFA/OpenGuard is to honor what you built, push forward with a modern, maintainable stack, and give the community a platform that will grow instead of stagnate. Your endorsement helps bridge the transition for those still running eFa, and I truly appreciate it.
I’ll continue supporting admins who need help with existing eFa installs, and I’ll work to make the migration path clean and painless.
Thank you again for everything you’ve contributed—none of this exists without the foundation you created.
It has been a couple months since any announcements. I am growing concerned that this project has stalled or something is amiss. I do not want to leave everyone who used eFa stranded.
@shawniverson I missed your message on here initially. Unfortunately Scott has not been active on the forum since last December. And the homepage of the project no longer mentions the free community edition. To me it feels like he "stole" your name and reputation and is now only in it for the money. The word "open" in the name of this project does not seem to mean anything anymore
Shawn, Maurice — you're both right, and I owe you both an answer.
@shawniverson — the silence you're calling out is real, and coming from you it hits different. You built eFa. OpenEFA only exists because your
project made that space possible, and I told you that when we first spoke. I didn't reach out when I pulled things private, and I didn't reach
out when the commercial framing went up on the site. Both of those were me failing to show up where I should have. I'm sorry.
@MauriceW67 — the "stole your name and reputation" reading is a fair interpretation of what it looked like from outside, and I'm not going to
push back on it. Here's what actually happened, in plain terms: I pulled the repo private because I couldn't figure out how to reconcile
releasing the whole codebase open-source with running a commercial side that could fund ongoing development. I didn't know how to make the
math work, and instead of saying that, I went quiet. The commercial-forward language on the home page got written during that private period —
it's not pretending, it's what the current commercial product genuinely is — but it doesn't reflect where the project is now going, and I understand
why it reads as a betrayal of the word "Open."
Here's where things are landing:
The open-source project is coming back under a new name: OpenEFA-CN (Community Node). It will ship under AGPL-3.0. It's being rebuilt around a
shared threat-intelligence Commons — every Community Node that runs contributes sender-side signals and benefits from signals contributed by
every other node worldwide. There's a commercial tier on top with advanced detection and hosted options, but the Community Node will be a real
filter, not a crippled demo. openefacn.com currently redirects here to this forum; that's intentional — the community side is the forum, not a
separate marketing page.
Shawn — I'd like to talk, separately from this thread. If you're open to it, I'd value your perspective on the relaunch: what the Community Node
needs to feel like a proper successor to eFa, what would make it trustworthy to the old community, and whether you'd want any formal role in
the governance of it. That's a real ask, not a platitude. DM me here or email me directly — whatever works.
Maurice — you're right to be skeptical until the code's actually out there. I'm not asking anyone to take my word for anything on a forum post.
Real repo, real release, concrete milestones in the next few weeks.
To both of you — sorry for the silence. That's the part I regret most.
