The Challenge -- The Invoice

[Julian Field]

At 19:50 08/11/2002, you wrote:
>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...

I have a consulting company run by a friend of mine (with all the necessary
"official" paperwork) in the UK. I can always issue invoices through his
company if that helps. That way the taxman gets 50% of it, but it's very
official.

If you would like paper invoices issued by a UK registered company, that's
no problem at all.

And I am already personally registered in the US for tax purposes as well
as in the UK.

>-----------------------------------
>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
> >

--
Julian Field                Teaching Systems Manager
jkf at ecs.soton.ac.uk         Dept. of Electronics & Computer Science
Tel. 023 8059 2817          University of Southampton
                             Southampton SO17 1BJ