Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!rutgers!netnews.upenn.edu!vax1.cc.lehigh.edu!cert.sei.cmu.edu!krvw From: GMS@PSUVM.PSU.EDU (Gerry Santoro - CAC/PSU 814-863-4356) Newsgroups: comp.virus Subject: Cost of Protection (Philosophy) Message-ID: <0005.9008151251.AA12488@ubu.cert.sei.cmu.edu> Date: 14 Aug 90 20:59:00 GMT Sender: Virus Discussion List Lines: 31 Approved: krvw@sei.cmu.edu Jim Powlesland writes: >Earlier, Padgett Peterson comments seemed to imply that some people >resent having to pay McAfee for virus protection - despite SCAN's >relative inexpensiveness. It's my impression that this resentment is >very real and much of it comes from the fact that users can get >relatively the samelevel of protection on their Macintoshes (ie. >Disinfectant and GateKeeper) FREE OF CHARGE. Not entirely true. Part of the 'resentment' (if you can call it that) comes from the fact that the organizational license is rather restrictive. I certainly support all of McAfee's efforts and also believe he is certainly entitled to renumeration. However, my understanding is that much of the license fee is based on support calls from users. There should therefore be some provision whereby a college/university can designate a local support person and pay a smaller fixed fee for the license. I see the inflexibility as being the primary culprit. I realize that other software vendors charge a heck of a lot more but then again we can simply ignore them in many cases. Also, with alternatives like F-PROT and the IBM VIRSCAN that cost substantially less it is real hard to justify major expenditures or overhead-laden cost-recovery to our administrators. Again I want to say that I VERY STRONGLY SUPPORT Mr. McAfee's efforts and agree that he is absolutely entitled to make whatever rules he wishes regarding his product. However I believe that Mr. Powlesland's analysis is a tad simplistic. Gerry Santoro -- Penn State University