> I came up with the idea before I ever heard mention of it anywhere
> else, and long before 8/2005.
Is that the debate now? I gave you credit for innovating it vs. _your
own bizarre claim_ that someone you explicitly fed the idea to could
claim it as IP! If you want full, original credit for it, fine: you're
the first one to put it together, for all I know, and I'll stick with
that from now on. But Brian was for sure _not_ the first, and these
over-the-top compliments to someone who implemented your spec well is
a sign that you haven't pitched too much stuff to good developers.
They're supposed to implement the spec. That's the job.
> I was searching for someone to develop a gateway from scratch with
> various improvements/adaptations of existing techniques as well as
> new ones since the first half of 2004.
Hmm, you never explicitly posted an RFP here in that regard. Did you
also contact developers to build this _from scratch_? If so, you don't
think your virtually null budget was the sticking point?
Do you not think it's relevant that the developer you "found" has a
nice nest egg and that Brian could not be considered to have developed
the product "from scratch" for you, since it was already in beta when
spamvertised? I guess you didn't meet your spec. You ended up
slipstreaming your ideas into an existing vendor design. And that is
likely to have been feasible with several other vendors or projects,
if you'd put on an actual search.
> ... I definitely wouldn't suggest that I was the only one to have
> thought of it, and I'm sure that I wasn't the first to ever think of
> it either. This is not something to waste bytes on.
Then stop wasting bytes giving surplus credit to someone you're
already obsessively protecting from charges of spamming, and clogging
the list with endless promos. You really want us all telling our
gateway tales? Is that what you think this list is for? Have you even
considered how many people have PostFix configs and so on, and aren't
falling over themselves to promote the other platform here?
> What does matter in the context though is that Brian made many of
> these things work...and then some. His code is his company's
> property. He is not the type of guy though to claim rights to such
> functionality being the good netizen that he is...
...only like millions of other developers in that regard...
> ...and I'm sure that we would all agree that much of the software
> technique patent stuff is damaging to advancements.
If you feel this way, stop nattering on about IP at all, then.
> Besides greylisting, groups of us have talked about or even
> implemented things before they existed to the public.
What kind of tangent are you on... do you want credit for this thing,
or not? I'll give you credit if you want, or not (if you don't want
it). What you categorically can't do is "will" that credit to someone
else who definitively didn't come up with it.
<snipped a whole lot of stuff about innovation and IP that really
doesn't have any bearing on spamvertised software that you later
contributed to and for some reason are deferring credit for>
> Unfortunately there are more good ideas than there are great
> programmers that can make the maximum use of this stuff.
Oh, yeah, no one else can write a mail gateway. No one at all. You had
to tolerate the spamvertising, because there was no other way to get
the talent! Did you approach any one of the dozens of high-performance
gateway vendors about these features? Any open-source projects?
> I didn't even give the idea of using his product a second thought
> until we started exchanging E-mails and I grew to understand that he
> was an even better person that I had thought, that he was a good
> programmer, and he gets "it".
Lots of commercial developers are nice guys, and lots of them have
great ideas and understand their vertical. And this is heroic now?
Must you overcompensate so?
> I think that we should embrace development like this because it is
> for the good of everyone, including Declude.
And only at the cost of accepting list spam and paying for a
commercial license! A bargain!
> Now non-experts can place a address validating and pre-scanning
> gateway in front of any Declude setup whereas before you nearly had
> to be an expert at this stuff and be aware of the obscure.
What a crazy statement. You've tried, what, one or two other gateway
products, then?
> Apology accepted :) I reserve the right though to discuss business
> arrangements with anyone at any time though.
You are on very dangerous ground here and I'd have thought you would
not condescend to me on this topic given the actual picture.
> I'm certainly not driving a Lamborghini you know.
I think you know that the ethical expectation of disclosure of
business ties is not *anything close to* a prohibition on business
ties, so stop this nonsense.
> You can't judge a person on one mistake, and it's not like he
> committed murder. Brian knows that he made a mistake in how he
> approached the topic on this list, but you can't fry him in Hell for
> the rest of his life because of this.
As long as the spamvertised product continues to be
relay-spamvertised, I will resist it. Expect it.
> Brian is an old-timer that has been fighting the good fight against
> the same crooks that are spamming us for more than a decade.
A decade in the biz? That's an old-timer? How depressing.
> Don't think for a second that some specialized gateway app is ever
> going to move his company's fortune from CyberSitter and the
> ubiquity of the desktop market.
So why isn't he giving it away? This whole line fails to convince. He
has enough money that he doesn't need to make it from this. And yet
he's charging for it -- and not shareware-level pricing either, I
gather from the fact that there aren't even any prices on the site...
always a trustworthy practice, that.
> This is more of a hobby project for him, and I'll bet that the only
> financial target he has is to justify continuing to work on it so
> people like us can benefit.
So he _only_ wants to get paid for his time, or some part of it. How
strikingly different that is from the motivation of thousands of other
developers. How moved I am by his sacrifice, that the people that
created Apache or SpamAssassin were unwilling to give.
> Gushy as it may sound, there are in fact people out there that care
> still.
People that _only_ "care" don't charge for their software. Ever hear
of that precept? Nothing wrong with charging, it's a legit part of the
game, just don't tell me a bleeding-heart ever charges more than a
postcard. A guy with plenty of money in the bank who still wants to
get paid is feeding you quite a line.
> In fact, it's a shame that neither one of us will even bring up this
> thread for fear of violating some sort of imaginary rule about what
> is proper and what isn't.
You can't talk about it with him privately? That is a shame. Someone
needs to get over it.
> I do wish that you would learn to forgive and forget. There is so
> much more good outside of dwelling on this.
So much to do! So many software products that can be sold,
unsolicited, to the competition! Everyone'd better get back to work on
the press releases for the products and services they were too ethical
to consider selling here.
That reminds me, I think that you never responded, a long time ago, to
this question:
Let me ask you something: does the fact that you, Matt, offer
free filters that help the anti-spam community mean that you can
promote your outsourced anti-spam service in a brand-new,
out-of-context product announcement? If yes, why so, and why haven't
you availed yourself of the marketing opportunity? If no, why not?
How about this one as well: Would you think it appropriate for a
gateway appliance vendor to make a product announcement on this list?
> As far as how appropriate the continued discussion is of Alligate, I
> will, with no misgivings, never talk of it again if Declude even
> suggests that it is not in their best interest to have it talked
> about here.
Oh, you know they won't shut you down, because they must be too busy
spamming other lists to care. Seriously, no, of course they won't
admit that it's not "in their best interest," because they are
politely hoping it will go away.
--Sandy
------------------------------------
Sanford Whiteman, Chief Technologist
Broadleaf Systems, a division of
Cypress Integrated Systems, Inc.
e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
SpamAssassin plugs into Declude!
http://www.imprimia.com/products/software/freeutils/SPAMC32/download/release/
Defuse Dictionary Attacks: Turn Exchange or IMail mailboxes into IMail Aliases!
http://www.imprimia.com/products/software/freeutils/exchange2aliases/download/release/
http://www.imprimia.com/products/software/freeutils/ldap2aliases/download/release/
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