Jesse Stroik wrote:
Karl,
Ease of setup and use are not the primary reason for purchasing any
product, IMO.
Yes, but you aren't the common user. Many commercial products *must*
have oversimplified setups if they want the largest possible customer
base.
It's more than a "common user" question. while I can build an
*BSD/Debian/Centos box to do what I want, I did buy "COTS" firewalls,
backup servers, ... etc.
I personally don't like being called when on vacation, and more
importantly, I don't want a company to "rely" on me. Not only for
"loyalty", but also because I want to be able to quit when I want.
This is probably because when I quitted my first employer, I had to help
them for some time. and at the time, I and my ego did like it. but since
then, I learned that it was bad for me and my employer.
Consider the difference between the primary goals of spamassassin
and arbitrary commercial anti-spam solution:
Spamassassin: To facilitate a community effort with the primary goal of
accurate reduction of spam.
Commercial Product: to sell as much commercial product as possible, with
the goal being either short term profits or long term profits.
A few years ago I bought a groupware that was configured as an open
relay out of the box. When I contacted support about changing the
default behavior, they said that they would lose customers if they
configured it securely out of the box, so they didn't do it.
Is spamassassin the best I've seen and worked with? Absolutely. Does
spamassassin cost more in sysadmin time and require a more competent
sysadmin to properly configure and maintain it? Yes. I've noticed in
my own work with spamassassin, especially under solaris, that more time
spent configuring it resulted in significantly better results.
there's a common misconception about tools (software or hardware): the
out of the box syndrom. some people think that they will "put it in and
everything will go on". This is wrong, whether it's open source or not.
Tools don't work by themselves. How many times did I hear a customer say
"... but it doesn't work..." and when asking "how is your DNS resolution
configured?" I get "sorry? what do you exactly mean...?" argh. and I
think many here have heared the classical "it started to fail this
morning, but nothing changed"...
anyway, if people have enough resources to run a product, let them. if
they can't, they'll need help. they may go with a commercial product
that "works out of the box and is easy to administer" and/or they can
contract someone to help them setup and maintain whatever product is
better for them.
and back to magicfoo, there's not much info about it on the network.
this is not a good sign.
