GNU / Linux based Anti Virus Software!

Mon Feb 18 04:25:47 GMT 2002

But how do you make it fair for places with 250 users compared to 25,000
users.  You can't charge them the same price.  IMHO the best way to do
it is charge for the number of internal users you are protecting.  On
outgoing your still charging for the number of people that you protect
that are sending mail.  Of course this is just my two cents.  Just to
give you an idea of what my point of view is on the situation I'll add
in a reply to Rishi's question about how many users I have, what I use,
and how much it costs.

Okay here's my deal.

Foundation.sdsu.edu has about 250 users.
Projects.sdsu.edu/kpbs.org (same mail server) has about 1250 users.

They are both protected (or acutally soon will be) by the same mail
gateway.

I'm using Mcafee.

It costs us $0.  The reason is the university (San Diego State
University) has a site license for Mcafee that covers us also.  I do
know that we used to have a 2 year contract with Mcafee that covered all
their Anti-Virus products (Desktop, File Servers, Mail Gateway, command
line, Exchange) for about $2400.  But that's also the eductional price.

Steve

-----Original Message-----
From: Rose, Bobby [mailto:brose at MED.WAYNE.EDU] 
Sent: Sunday, February 17, 2002 6:03 PM
To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Subject: Re: GNU / Linux based Anti Virus Software!

I think we are talking about virus protection not file/print services of
the OS or  mailbox services.  I mean that they don't charge per user on
windows machines for AV software like they are trying to do with Unix
machines.  Windows NT based machines are multiuser and since win2k
include telnet if you want compare apples and oranges.

The reason I say you can't charge per user on a mail gateway is because
you can't quantify users.  You are scanning "outgoing" mail also.  So
technically you are protecting people that are not even on your system
or in your environment.  How can you quantify the recipient of that
message?  You can't unless you track every destination address that
people in your system are sending to.  How about another scenario. Let's
say you have a student with a laptop that prefers to use their home ISP
provided mail account.  That student can't relay smtp mail thru their
ISP from school so instead they bounce it off the school SMTP relay.
How do you quantify that? 

See what I mean.  The licensing of per user isn't logical for Antivirus
software.  It should be per machine, since that is really what it's
protecting.  I've yet to have user call in sick because they came down
with Code Red ;-)  

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Evans [mailto:sevans at FOUNDATION.SDSU.EDU] 
Sent: Sunday, February 17, 2002 6:33 PM
To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Subject: Re: GNU / Linux based Anti Virus Software!

They don't charge per user for Windows machines?  Yeah they do.  Not for
Windows 2000 Pro.  But put up a Windows 2000 file server.  You have to
buy a CAL (Client Access License) which means you have to buy a license
for each user.  Same with Exchange 2000, SQL 2000, etc.  You buy iPlanet
Mail Server, they want to know how many users you'll have on the mail
server and they'll charge you per user.  The mail gateway doesn't have
any users, but it's protecting a certain number of users.  It wouldn't
be fair to charge a mail gateway that protects 100 users the same as a
mail gateway that protects 1000, or 10,000 users would it?

Steve

-----Original Message-----
From: Rose, Bobby [mailto:brose at MED.WAYNE.EDU] 
Sent: Sunday, February 17, 2002 2:20 PM
To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Subject: Re: GNU / Linux based Anti Virus Software!

It's stupid licensing to charge per user anyway for unix.  They don't
charge per user for Windows machines.  Virus protection isn't protecting
the user, it's protecting the machine.  It's the machine that gets
infected and spreads virus not the user.  The user is just a carrier.

Then you get into the concept of mail gateway's which typically don't
have any users.  The concept of charging per user protected which was
one statement from a Symantec reseller for their Nav for Gateways.  Yeh
right, it's a gateway that scanning incoming and outgoing mail and if
you relay for a large domain especially educational environments, then
there isn't any way you could ever know how many users.  I don't think
the AV folks have a clue about their own licensing and salespeople say
whatever they think the licensing might mean.  Whenever I checked for
products to do what mailscanner does, I got different answers or that
they would have to check with someone else.

My 2 cents.

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Evans [mailto:sevans at FOUNDATION.SDSU.EDU] 
Sent: Saturday, February 16, 2002 10:54 AM
To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Subject: Re: GNU / Linux based Anti Virus Software!

My feeling is of course they charge per user.  I don't know of many
licensing schemes that don't charge per user.

Steve

        -----Original Message----- 
        From: Rishi Gangoly [mailto:rishi at THEARGONCOMPANY.COM] 
        Sent: Sat 2/16/2002 6:56 AM 
        To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK 
        Cc: 
        Subject: Re: GNU / Linux based Anti Virus Software!

        > At 18:20 15/02/2002, you wrote:
        > >Is MailScanner planning to get OpenAntiVirus to work as one
for the
        > >scanners?
        >
        > At some point, yes. However, I don't think it is urgent as I
don't really
        > believe that many large sites will trust their anti-virus
support to an
        > open-source project with voluntarily-supplied updates. The
crucial bit in
        > virus support these days is that you can get updates for your
package
        > within a few hours of a virus being seen in the wild for the
first time,
        > and I don't really believe that a voluntary project can
achieve the sort
        of
        > speed you can manage by paying people to sit there all day
writing virus
        > updates.
        > --
        > Julian Field                Teaching Systems Manager

        True, but what I'm most disappointed about all the Anti Virus
companies is
        that they charge for their Linux command line scanner per
mailbox, which is
        nuts.

        I can't afford to pay for 800 mailboxes (and growing) on my
Cobalt Domain
        that I host with for all my customers. I am currently Virtual
Hosting on the
        Cobalt RaQ3 server for about 16 - 20 domains.

        All Anti Virus companies have in their license agreements a
clause saying
        it's fine to use it for a Server but not for Mail Server (i.e.
SMTP not
        allowed)

        If I use it to scan mailboxes, they want to DING us big time.

        Is what I'm saying true?

        My Customers can't afford to pay per mailbox.

        What are your thoughts?

        Regards

        Rishi