At 9/29/03 8:22 PM, David Iyoha wrote: >This must have fell through the cracks due to the Verisign sitefinders >issue. > >However I received a survey from OpenSRS that indicates they are looking to >provide hosting and hosting related services >- Basic Hosting >- Sitebuilder software >- Ecomerce solutions >etc. > >what does everyone think about that?
Oh, I'd leave in an instant. As has been widely discussed, there are some things resellers can't do because of their size, and that's what Elliot originally promised OpenSRS would stick to. One example of a thing OpenSRS resellers are probably too small to do is become a registrar, so it made sense for OpenSRS to become one and aggregate the power of their resellers. Another obvious example where resellers are too small but OpenSRS might be big enough is a backend payment gateway service to compete with AuthorizeNet, et al; if that's what's meant by e-commerce, then great. Things that do *not* fit this category are e-mail service (which I have managed to turn a blind eye to, because the Tucows offering is so overpriced and uncustomizable that it doesn't really generate any competition) and Web hosting. This is absolutely my line in the sand. If Tucows offers Web hosting services, I will transfer every last one of my domains away as they expire. I hope my salesperson is listening. We're not a huge reseller, but we're not tiny, either. I find it difficult to believe this idea is actually still being considered at Tucows, despite the overwhelming condemnation it has received on this list over the years. If this isn't the result of some misunderstanding, it's clear that Tucows has calculated that they will earn more money by picking up new resellers (who are actually little more than marketing affiliates for thinly veiled Tucows retail hosting and e-mail services) than by offering services to address the unmet needs of medium sized ISPs. -- Robert L Mathews, Tiger Technologies
