Update on F-prot issue

[Alan Fiebig]

We may be arguing semantics here, and while I'm not a lawyer, nor do I play one on television, I am of the opinion that F-Prot spells out the license issues clearly enough on their website that we are asking for trouble by using their workstation version, especially those of us in a commercial situation.

F-Prot make it pretty obvious that if you are using their product for scanning e-mail, even if there are no inboxes on the computer you are running F-Prot on, you MUST use their mailserver version. The product description for the workstation version explicitly states that it is ONLY to be used to protect the specific user and their files on THAT single workstation, and NOT any networked files, such as on a mail server.

As the pricing is based on the number of mailboxes, even if those mailboxes are located on a different server, it makes it very expensive on an annual basis, considering that I have around 7,000 mailboxes ($5,000 per year).

I agree that the actual license that ships with the product is ambiguious, and that our case could probably be won in a court of law, but I'm not inclined to want to spend the time and cost to fight them in court. There is such a thing as the 'spirit' of the issue vs. the 'letter' of the issue.

That is the entire reason I'm eager to see CA's Etrust up and working.

Here are some of the places F-Prot spells out that for our purposes, we MUST use the mailserver license even if all we actual implement is the command line scanner portion of the product:

FAQ (http://www.f-prot.com/support/unix_faq/9.html)
>Q: Can I use F-Prot Antivirus for Sendmail/Qmail/Postfix?
>A: If you are using the freely available version, you can find a whole host of third-party applications for scanning e-mail using F-Prot Antivirus.
>If you are a commercial user, you need to invest in F-Prot Antivirus for Linux Mail Servers.

FAQ (http://www.f-prot.com/support/unix_faq/22.html)
>Q:What license will best suit my needs?
>A: For information on which license will be best suited for your needs, please read the following:
>
>F-Prot Antivirus for Linux/BSD Workstations:
>____________________________________________
>
>A Workstation license is intended for usage on a single-user workstation, protecting the user and systems on that same workstation.
>If the computer provides networked services, e.g., is a file sharing server e.g., Samba), web server or mail server, then a File Server
>or a Mail Server license would be required. The Workstation version is licensed per workstation.



Julian posted:
>And as their software licence fails to define the terms "workstation",
>"server" or "mail server", they can hardly hold you in breach of their licence.
>However, if you can afford it, you might like to buy the "server" version.
>It doesn't offer any extra facilities that you will need, but none of us
>really want F-Prot going bankrupt.
>--
>Julian Field
>www.MailScanner.info
>Professional Support Services at www.MailScanner.biz
>MailScanner thanks transtec Computers for their support