Re: www.zmailer.org

[Matti Aarnio <mea@nic.funet.fi>]

> Matti,
> 
> Once Matti Aarnio wrote:
> >www.zmailer.org is hosted at a web-hotel server at Telecom
> 
> 	Great. We should take a look at sendmail.org and qmail.org
> and do something better ;-)

	Indeed, we took this step after noticing appearance
	of those ORGs..   Now if somebody (hint, hint) would
	design a neat logo for the ZMailer.  Something as
	"cute" as Linux penguing.

> >On related topic:
> >
> >Recently I got a question, if Telecom Finland is going to make 
> >ZMailer as its (commercial) product.  At least for now our idea
> >is NOT to do that, not in commercial basis anyway.
> >(Our ZMailer team is effectively one person, myself...)
> 
> 	This is a very bad news, but I kind of expected this.
> Pushing ZMailer into production in our company (which handles
> quite some mail) costed me quite a lot of efforts primarily
> convincing and educating people. If what's quoted above can
> possibly happen NLnet will definitely refrain from further
> usage of this software.

	Depending on how you understand "commercial" ?

	We will definitely use it in our own commercial service,
	and we will sell services based on it, but (for now)
	we don't have plans to sell ZMailer, or support for it.

	I can use part of my working hours for solving ZMailer
	communitys problems, though.  Our own services are likely
	to meet the same problems, after all.

	On the other hand, if enough people ask, I have basis
	to convince my bosses (and myself) on the matter.

	(just wondering aloud..)  How much there would be market
	for support of software that you get in source for free,
	and the free releases would be tracking very closely the
	paid supported version ?  This just because doing two trees
	in high quality manner is -- how to say -- "painfull"..

	With 10 paying customers the full-time support might cost
	something in order of USD 5000-6000 a year per customer.
	(I am not economist, thus I have no good idea on what is
	 "good selling price", and how many support contracts
	 could be sold.   Lowering price should increase the sales,
	 but the net product must exceed the expenses, or the thing
	 is not viable... )
...
> 							alexis
> -- 
> 							Surf on...

/Matti Aarnio <mea@nic.funet.fi>
	(Talking about ZMailer at FUNET archive server, while
	 using 'our' word, which is not related to FUNET in any way)