>1- Is $10 the best price we are ever going to get with OpenSRS? I find it a
>bit frustrating that my wholesale price is $10
This has been discussed before a lot. I think $10 is a fair price considdering
the programming of OpenSRS (even if I think perl is not a good choise for the future - see below). But I agree that $10 is at the ver upper range if somebody does f.ex.
a registration or a renewel for 5 or 10 years. Tucows gets money which
will increase itself at a bank account f.ex. or probably help now to develop
the business. So there should be a better pricing plan, with a reduction
for long term registrations/renewals. Because we too have to make
reductions for the customers in these cases. Otherwise they might really
choose a cheaper registrar/reseller.
With the new top level domains + .us quite a lot of people will want just to 'reserve'
names corresponding to their .com domain. And they do not ask for service,
they just want to secure their mydom.info/.biz/.us for 10 years.
So Chuck, why not offer a 'special secure-your-domains-period'
with 10-years registrations at a slightly reduced fee?
(f.ex. end of this year)
>2- Is there yet or will there ever be any other clients than Perl? I
I also think php would be a better choice for the future for the following reasons:
- Perl is mainly based to the (very good) work of 1 Guru. Of course others
are working on it, but there is not such a good comunication between the
developper / co-developpers and end-users like it is in PHP
- PHP is the result of a group of people, better organized, very well support
(like f.ex. the http://php.net/anyfunction). And this group has the spirit
to react to actual need and to wishes of the user community. Even if one of
the core developpers will retire, PHP will go on. Whereas Perl in my opinion
has already become to be a 'hobby' programming language. It is nice,
but there is no more power to follow close to the need of the internet.
So myself and lots of my collegues have abandonned any Perl.
Young programmers do not learn any more much Perl. In a few years
it will be difficult to find a young programmer who will be able make changes
to Perl for a reasonable price.
- another advantage of PHP might be, that in my opinion the PHP developpers
are closer following the developpement of MySQL, which is meanwhile
vital for many web applications.
Matthias
