> >Every vendor still knew what it was about and could have joined. Let's
> >say you and your friends are told you can make an investment, but can
> >only find out how to make the investment pay off until you do invest.
> >And you decide not to do it, but everyone else does. Do you now cry
> >'unfair, unfair' if it pays off for them?!? I would think not.
>
>
> Certainly not. However, the NCSA is now holding itself out as the
> firewall approval body. Fine, don't they have an obligation to the public
> to review all firewalls, not just their paying members? They way they do
> it is paying off to them to the detriment of others and misleading the
> public. Without full disclosure, their list is misleading.
I don't know much about NCSA, but unless *all* their equipment is donated
and *all* their staff are volunteers, someone has to foot the bill... OK,
so maybe instead of insisting on vendors paying a membership fee they
could charge non-members a reasonable hourly or daily rate for the testing.
But then, who decides what's 'reasonable' ? :) Would say, $100 per hour,
or $1000 per day be considered 'reasonable' ? Wouldn't take too many days
to add up to $22,000... :) And then, I guess, we'd have people bitching
about "It cost me twice as much to have my whizz-bang XYZ firewall tested,
compared to the FireBall from Great Walls of Fire Corp..."
Before anyone wastes bandwidth stating the obvious, I realize that a more
complex firewall would take more time (and money...) to fully test... My
point is that it's gonna cost someone, somewhere, a pile of money to put
together the equipment and expertise to properly test each firewall, and
it's not at all unreasonable to expect the vendor to pay, whether it be
a flat-rate membership fee, or a per-hour/per-firewall fee.
Just my $0.02...
Ralph Mitchell (System Administrator)
--
MPSI Inc., 8282 South Memorial Drive, Tulsa, Oklahoma 74133
Email: ralph @
mpsisys .
com PHONE: 918-250-9611 x237 FAX: 918-254-8764
"Never underestimate the power of human stupidity" - Salvor Hardin, Foundation
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