The Challenge -- The Invoice

[Jeff A. Earickson]

Y'all,
   I well agree that Julian deserves renumeration for his fine work with
MailScanner.  Colby College has benefited tremendously from his work.
The problem in a business bureaucracy is the beancounters.  They want to
see an invoice for a product/service, a legal description of what they
are paying for, etc -- ye olde paper trail.  The managers also want
accountability and budget control.  I can't just get purchasing
to send somebody a check because I say he's a good guy.

   I have the same headache with other valuable "free but please contribute"
software like SpamCop.  We use their blocklist; same issue with $$$.
We do pay for RBL+ ($125/year, I think) because they have a means of
billing us.  But that means RBL+ suddenly has to have a support staff,
a billing office, paperwork, file tax forms -- be a business.  Frankly,
RBL+ isn't a tenth as useful as SpamCop.

   The sad thing here is that while MailScanner is "free", Sophos sweep
is not.  We pay good money to use sweep within MailScanner on our mail
server.  We would have paid Sophos even more to use their inferior
MailMonitor software -- if their sales person hadn't recommended
MailScanner to me instead.  IMHO, Sophos and the other anti-virus
vendors should be paying Julian for promoting sales of their products.

   The problem, for me at least, is not the money.  It is the paperwork
needed to issue the check/cheque.  Maybe Julian needs to start sending
out bills...

-----------------------------------
Jeff A. Earickson, Ph.D
Senior UNIX Sysadmin and Email Guru
Information Technology Services
Colby College, 4214 Mayflower Hill,
Waterville ME, 04901-8842
phone: 207-872-3659 (fax = 3076)
-----------------------------------

On Fri, 8 Nov 2002, Lewis Bergman wrote:

> Date: Fri, 8 Nov 2002 12:49:11 -0600
> From: Lewis Bergman <lbergman at wtxs.net>
> To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
> Subject: The Challenge
>
> All the talk and offers of donating hardware to Julian to further improve MS
> are great. I just don't think they go far enough. We are a commercial entity.
> We charge people money as a result of Julian's efforts. I think it is only
> fair that Julian be awarded at least some paltry sum as a result.
>
> I believe this should be the case if your are a large educational institution
> or a business. If you gain economic benefit by either costs saved or profits
> produced you should consider rewarding Julian's hard work out of gratitude.
> He hasn't asked for anything but I think version 4 proves it is high time to
> step up and reward him without him asking.
>
> My company has done this already. We wanted certain features which were either
> not on the radar screen or way down the list. Julian did not ask but I
> offered to "bump" these features up the list in exchange for paying him since
> he would obviously forgore some other pleasurable pursuits. As a direct
> result you have the old "domains.to.scan.conf" and its version 4 equivalent
> "Spam Checks". The improved F-Prot logging is also a result as well as some
> other minor things. We only did this when we thought that the features we
> requested were of use to the general population of MailScanner.
>
> I now challenge the rest of you to do the same. To date we have paid Julian
> $350.00 USD and there is no other software available that could do what MS
> does for even ten times that amount. When you ask for something that benefits
> you and causes Julian (or Nick) to do some work, seriously consider paying
> them. I think you could all let your conscience guide you as to when this is
> appropriate.
> --
> Lewis Bergman
> Texas Communications
> 4309 Maple St.
> Abilene, TX 79602-8044
> 915-695-6962 ext 115
>