Re: email question...

[Csongor Fagyal]

I feel the winds of change... and some trouble and flame war coming.

I think whatever has been said, introducing a value-added service means that in fact OpenSRS have a new marketing strategy. Actually in my opinion they have the right to do whatever they want to do: this decision might be a new one, but I would not be suprised to hear that this had been decided even before OpenSRS registered their first domain. It is kind of a trend Tucows/OpenSRS _have_to_ follow - just look at all the other registars who are making quite a nice amount of money offering similar services. We know that OpenSRS is not lowering their prices, and if I were them, I would do the same: "do not eat the chicken that lays golden eggs" as a saying goes in our country. So, as opposed to Abel, I am not reconsidering things about Tucows: I am reconsidering our strategy now, excepting the worst (but hoping for the best - this is Alphaville, right? ;-)).

There has been some discussions going on about this on this list many months ago. Most resellers said, as far as I remember: "do not do this". But now, alea iacta est. It is up to the resellers now how to handle the situation, not OpenSRS to change their decision.

I know it is unethical to say things like this on _this_ list, but as we had always been kind of afraid of this step to be taken, what we have been doing for quite some time now is to create a domain-registration "middleware". It is a system, which uses the OpenSRS API on one end, and a HTML templating system on the other, while storing all domain registration (an other) data locally. Now the middleware is also capable of handling an attribute called "registar". I think this tells you all. While OpenSRS is one of the nicest companies we have ever had a relationship with, changing their way of thinking also affects our way of thinking. If they try to increase their profit by pushing their resellers focus closer to marketing instead of technology, which I think they are doing, then that is a business decision, and then our business decision is to increase our profit by having a bigger margin on domain registration, and, in general, relying on more than one registar at a time.

We have kind of a nice community here on this list. As photographers say: let us see, what develops! If this e-mail stuff turns out to be harmful, together we will find out a way to overcome the difficulties - where there's a will, there's a way. If it does not, then we are happy and we can just go on, and either use or disregard this new service.


Just my two eurocents.

- Cs.