Beta 3 of version 3.0 of Mozilla's Thunderbird open source e-mail application is now available for download, for Windows, the Mac and Linux. You can get it here, although it's still classified as for testing purposes only. There are also release notes, and a list of known issues available. Version 3.0 is a major upgrade, and has been in the works for more than a year. Here are some of the enhancements.

Every sector of the tech industry, be it hardware or software oriented, offering open or closed source solutions, is feeling the economic pinch. Open-Xchange continues to weather the storm with its "software as a service" (SaaS) open source Exchange server alternative, announcing today it has added four new collaboration partners.

There is no magic formula for success in any business or economy, but Open-Xchange saw its SaaS product, the Open-Xchange Hosting Edition, hit the eight million users mark this year. Though many of Open-Xchange's partners are web hosts and ISPs, there is a real appeal to the SaaS model for businesses with few IT resources who are interested in adopting a groupware solution that's open and easily managed.

Frustrated by spam? SpamAssassin is one of the most comprehensive tools that you can use to fight it off. Its secret is the large and varied tests that it runs on incoming e-mail messages, as well as its flexible configuration. SpamAssassin won't stop all spam, but it will significantly reduce it.