Re: Re[2]: [Security Firewall] Florins Firewall

On 3-Aug-05, at 7:02 AM, Mitchell, Neill wrote:

>> the Mandriva club provides home products, the MNF is not at all an  
>> home
>>
> product.<
>
> Hang on a minute. Are saying that Mandriva Club is only for "home  
> products".
> Then why did I pay for an extremely expensive Corporate membership?  
> I think
> you guys need to make it much clearer what each membership level  
> entitles a
> person too.

Aha!  You are a member of Corporate Club!  Ok, this makes things a  
little different then.  I my mind, it makes sense to offer a reduced  
discount on MNF to members of Corporate Club.  It does *not* make  
sense to give it away to an audience for whom MNF was never really  
intended (ie. home users).  For members of Corporate Club... I  
definitely thing a reduction in price is not unreasonable.

> I also hope you have done your market research re. pricing of MNF  
> 2. You are
> trying to break into an extremely paranoid market with MNF2.  
> Companies take
> their firewalls very seriously and nobody has heard of you in this  
> market
> place.

That's a fairly broad assumption.  MNF8.2 which came out a few years  
ago has been very well received and is used by a fair number of  
companies.  Sure, we're not a Cisco, but we're not a nobody who just  
came out with a firewall product.  We've been doing a dedicated  
firewall product for many years, starting with SNF that was based on  
Mandrake 7.2.  That's quite a while ago.

> You are playing with the big boys such as Cisco and Checkpoint who  
> have been
> supplying proven firewall software for many years.
> Everyone I have mentioned MNF2 have been extremely dismissive as  
> you have no
> track record. I think you'd do far better in the long run targeting  
> small
> companies with a cheap solution.
> I also have to say that the last beta that was released for test  
> has quite a
> few issues. If they have not been fixed (and as you have not  
> released a
> final Release candidate for user testing I can't see how you can  
> have), you
> are going to get an awful lot of bad press. From what I understand  
> from this
> newsgroup, Mandriva has not really taken much MNF2 development as  
> seriously
> as its main products. I can't possible see how you have managed to  
> properly
> test and fix such a complex product in the time since Florin left.

QA has been doing testing and Andreas and Daouda have finished the  
development on it.  I understand that most people seem to think that  
Florin==Firewall God, but you make it sound like the rest of the  
company is inept and only Florin could possibly work on the product.   
That in itself is a little insulting, don't you think?

> You have a marvellous opportunity to get further free testing with the
> member of this newsgroup. I think giving a few dozen free copies to
> dedicated list members will do you far more good than harm.

Ummm... pretty much the entire mailing list was asking for free  
ISOs.  Go back through the archives and see how many people responded  
"Me too!  I'm a lurker and downloaded the odd beta, never reported a  
bug, but I'm on the mailing list so I'd like to get it free".  I have  
nothing against rewarding those who have actually contributed, but  
unless someone goes back through the archives to see who did  
contribute, you're pretty much looking at a list (if anyone bothered  
to compile it from the responses) of 80% of the respondants having a  
status of "lurker".  Well, I'm sorry, but being a lurker on a mailing  
list doesn't entitle you to a freebie that should be reserved for  
those who actually committed a little bit of time and effort.

-- 
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