I'm not sure I buy the part about not wanting a bad reputation. Sophos have virtually no reputation in North America as it is. Besides, there can't be that many people running home mail servers and those likely have propellers on their heads! Surely they could load a virus package properly without help.
Besides, techies running mailservers on their home networks probably have some influence on what is used at the companies where they work. Providing the package for free or a modest amount to cover admin costs might actually get Sophos more corporate contracts. Afterall, the people who administer systems are more comfortable with packages they know and use. I tried out MailScanner using Sophos last week. Installing consisted of untarring Sophos, running the MailScanner rpm, and them running the Sophos install command. I took less than 5 mins. This is on a standard RH 7.1 system. I also tried it on a 7.2 system too. Also, if Sophos were really concerned about all the home freebies using up support time they could just set up a mailing list for those without support contracts. Everyone else does that...we're on one now!!! Gerry On Mon, 10 Dec 2001, Dave Ihnat wrote: > > Ok, this wasn't far off. I spoke with a salescritter today (12/10), > and he flat-out stated they have priced themselves to avoid the home or > very small network market. The reason he gave is sensible--tech support > gets hammered in that environment, and they don't want to dilute their > commercial tech support to be able to give the home market acceptable > support, and don't want to give shoddy home support that would get them a > bad reputation. He was willing to give me some "unofficial" quotations, > valid in the US. (If Sophos is free for personal use in Germany, as is > stated in the AntiVirus mailing lists, he's unaware of it.) > > His price for a Linux server + 4 workstations was $480/year. This shoots > Sophos for most non-commercial Linux installations. > > On the other hand, the pricing for commercial installations was quite > decent. A hypothetical 1 Linux/Unix server + 60 workstations, for Sweep > only, would cost $945/year. They do contracts in 1, 2, or three-year > agreements; for each additional year they drop the price by 50%. > > Pricing for Sweep + InterCheck for the same sized installation would be > around $2350/year. > -- "The lyfe so short, the craft so long to learne" Chaucer _______________________________________________ Redhat-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list
