MailScanner support

[Mariano Absatz]

El 25 Feb 2003 a las 16:57, Gerry Doris escribió:

> > At 15:20 25/02/2003, you wrote:
> >>is a possible twist on this idea making a new list
> >>that only those that 'subscribe' can post, but all can
> >>view?
> >
> > That's not a bad idea. I will have to find out if the mailing list
> > server I use (which has done me very well so far) has the option of
> > doing this. Otherwise I will have to run my own to do it. I might end up
> > running www.mailscanner.info and mailscanner.biz on their own server
> > anyway, due to problems hosting commercial operations on academic
> > networks.
> > --
> > Julian Field
> > www.MailScanner.info
> > MailScanner thanks transtec Computers for their support
> 
> Be careful with this.  If you restrict mailing list posting to the
> privileged who are able to pay then you will end up with a different mix
> of users.  I suggest that before long you'll have virtually all business
> users.  If that's what you want then just go fully commercial and forget
> about the home/hobby users altogether.
> 
> I believe that the most outstanding aspect of MailScanner is the support
> that you personally provide.  It goes far beyond what any other product,
> commercial or otherwise, offers.  All someone has to do is request a
> feature and you provided it...often within hours.  I'm not talking about
> bug fixes but about features.
> 
> Perhaps you need to revisit this.  Maybe requests for new features should
> be added to a list which you prioritize and decide if it will make
> MailScanner a better package.  Those wishing to pay would obviously
> influence how you view the request.
> 
> In other words, you might want to consider building a roadmap of features
> you'd like to include in MailScanner and then working on them in a
> disciplined and managed manner that corresponds to the time you have
> avialable.
> 
> Just my $0.02.
> 
> Gerry

On adding another 2cents... you might like to check what a small company 
called Open Systems Consultant (http://www.open.com.au) do.

They _sell_ their open source software, provide free mailing list support and 
payed e-mail support on a yearly or per-task basis.

This goes like this, they produce a top-notch radius server called Radiator 
(_nothing_ is close to it in features, configurability _and_ support), they 
sell it for a price based on number of servers (see 
http://www.open.com.au/ordering.html) and you can freely download a version 
that has a couple of modules encrypted and self-disables 1 month after 
installation.

The first time we bought it to be installed on a customer ISP and we bought 
the 1-year mail support contract. Anyway, any time I had a problem I first 
asked in the mailing list and everytime it got answered by one of the tech 
guys (there are only 2 visible, one doing development and the other answering 
questions about configuration that posts and answers daily to the list).

They have the kind of commitment you have to mailscanner (e.g. more than once 
I got a patch implementing a feature I asked for the day after I mailed, it 
made it to the main code in the next release).

The only problem of this model is that the software is _always_ paid for. For 
a radius server you usually have a case than if you are authenticating dial-
up users you probably are a medium to large sized organization or ISP. This 
is not the case with mailscanner where plain individuals use it. 

Anyway, it is an alternative way of making for-profit open source software.

Regards.
--
Mariano Absatz
El Baby
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Computers are only human.