Wednesday, Wednesday, August 29, 2001, 4:32:15 PM, Cameron Powell wrote:
> I'm happy to give information. On the other hand, ad hominem attacks such
> as those below I will interpret as a lack of interest in Tucows' proposition
> to its resellers, and I will simply record that lack of interest as a "no"
> next to the "yes" column. I am here to answer, to -- yes -- market, and to
> do business; I'm afraid I'm not here to be a sounding board for everyone's
> problems with the system. In fact, if you are not interested in the
> opportunity I offer, then the simplest solution, the one that least impacts
> the limited time of those here specifically and solely to learn more, is
> simply to abstain.
Being one who will soon also be marketing ancillary services to
OpenSRS RSPs, my only concern would be that this service will be an
offering of a third party service through Tucows to RSPs.
I look skeptically at any product expansion by Tucows, and one of the
things I look at is if the product offering infringes on an area that
the resellers could/should be doing independently. For example, if
Tucows started offering web hosting in a wholesale manner through
OpenSRS RSPs, I'd be more than a bit concerned. SSL Certs were not
really an issue, since it didn't put Tucows in a position of competing
with their resellers.
I'm not at all interested in your service, myself, or in offering it
to my customers. But then, I'm also not interested in offering .name
or .pro domain names to my customers, but will probably sign the
contracts so that I can do them manually if a customer inquires and
really wants one (though I'd probably try to dissuade them).
But what I see is that rather than Tucows working out a way for
OpenSRS RSPs to take advantage of those 50 sockets and working out a
system for those RSPs who are most interested in offering this kind of
service to develop a system where those sockets could be put to best
use in, and thus letting the RSPs tailor this service to their own
vision, this is being contracted out to a third party who will dictate
the terms under which RSPs will be participating in this functional
ability.
I'm not sure I care for that. To be honest, I'm also not sure that I
like the fact that Tucows is getting involved with your company in
particular, though I'd probably still be concerned with any third
party they partnered with on a service like this. I expressed a lot
of reservations when your company first began its public PR push about
Tucows' relationship with Snapnames, and that I didn't think it was
such a good idea for Tucows to get involved with a company such as
yours, and that I have serious concerns about the services your
company is offering, and the public policy implications of some of
them.
Add my concerns about this service being offered via a third party
contract, to my concerns about your company in general, and I really
have to say that I would personally oppose any involvement with your
company by Tucows, and as a reseller, my advise to them would be to
not get involved with this, and instead to work out a system
internally, such as a different API that would exclusively use the 50
sockets for automated systems, that would enable RSPs to find the best
way to use this kind of a service on their own.
So I guess the question comes down to, what exactly does Tucows need
you for? They have the sockets, they have the ability to offer those
sockets to their resellers directly. Resellers exist who have the
knowledge and expertise to develop systems to take the upmost
advantage of those resources. Not all resellers would be able to take
advantage of it, but to me that would be just one of the things that
differentiates resellers from each other.
--
Best regards,
William X Walsh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Userfriendly.com Domains
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