I think that charging a one time fee to register the product makes more sense
than a monthly fee. The reason I say this has to do with the intended
audience. If you are targeting the home audience with a cable connection they
have the choice of buying a cable router/firewall for aprox $100 US. If you
are targeting a the corporate audience they have the option of buying
something like a pix firewall for about $1500 US but it supports up to 8MBS
and has a bunch of features. Smaller offices can also go for
he cable/dsl router/firewall like the home user. In both of these instances
neither one charges a monthly fee.
Now for the registration fee I think something comptetitive with the
cable/dsl router/firewalls would be better. The reason is that you are more
likely to get your home Linux hobbiest involved before the corporations give
up on their pix firewalls. This will also entice smaller companies to buy
into Mandrake Firewall rather than spending a lot of money on the big
firewalls.
I had been asked by my boss to test Mandrake firewall because he thought it
was going to be free. (I know, you can't get something for nothing) anyway,
we are looking at it to install in our client's offices. We are an ISP for
bussinesses. We plan on using it both as a firewall and router as well as
being able to use snort to monitor for attempted break in's. If we can't pass
the cost on to our clients then it won't be a viable solution.
As part of the registration you can include 6 months or 1 year of
downloadable updates. After that you can charge for additional years or
months.
The registration should be tied to some sort of certificate that resides on
the machine. The reason I bring this up is that I originally thought it could
be tied to the IP address. Then I remember I have a dynamic address at home
so that wouldn't work. Just something to keep in mind.
Anyway,
These are my thoughts. Thank you for allowing me to present them..
Steve
On Friday 11 May 2001 10:13, you wrote:
> On Fri, 11 May 2001, Miguel Beccari wrote:
> :~>> Hello Everyone:
> :~>>
> :~>> What is the latest version of this distro?
> :~>>
> :~>> I seem to have a hard time finding information about this distro. Any
> :~>> suggestions for web site, etc?
> :~>>
> :~>
> :~>I cant find infos about cooke-firewall.
> :~>
> :~>I planned to setup up 3 servers and I'd like to use this distro.
> :~>So my question is:
> :~>
> :~>when the stable release comes out?
> :~>
> :~>one month? two?
> :~>
>
> Miguel (and others),
>
> Distro will be out very soon (less than one month), and I'm curious to
> hear answer to one question from you and other raders of this list: money.
>
> That is, what would you (or your customers) like to get from us (related
> to MandrakeSecurity), and how much are you willing to pay for it?
>
> I'm asking this question because of one really unpleasant detail: if
> everyone simply downloads the distribution, and we don't earn on it, I bet
> the distribution will eventually end up in trash can, and you will end up
> with unsupported (== no more security updates! == useless) distribution on
> your firewall. ;-)
>
> So: how much is your security worth to you, and what do you expect to have
> from Mandrakesoft in return? In my opinion, best thing to do would be some
> kind of long-term commitment from both sides, like:
>
> Customer: monthly fee of X$/server during next Y months (years).
> Mandrakesoft: commitment to do (whatever) during the same period.
>
> WDYT?
> Denis
