At 10/20/03 5:48 PM, Roger B.A. Klorese wrote: >OK, so the question is: > >Is it possible to be on this list yet have no valid access to the RRC?
I think so. But honestly, who cares? Let me toot my own horn and point out that my original answer had much more detail than the RRC information. If the discuss list couldn't be used to discuss/elaborate/question information that's "only" in the RRC, there wouldn't be much point to it. The alternative method of keeping this info restricted to resellers is making the list private. However, I can't think of a good reason why any of this knowledge should be kept from the general public, beyond the fact that it might confuse end-users who stumble across it on a public Tucows site. I assume that's the reason it was moved, rather than because it's in OpenSRS's interest to stop non-resellers from knowing the answer to reseller questions, which it's not: if a smart end-user learns something and explains something to a stupid reseller, OpenSRS is better off than if the end-user went away in disgust or contacted OpenSRS for assistance. OpenSRS is also better off if a prospective reseller finds the answers to his questions here instead of bugging sales. The only half-reasonable suggestion I've ever heard in favor of OpenSRS information secrecy is that it prevents end-users from seeing wholesale pricing, but when you think about it, even that doesn't really work beyond keeping the prices mildly obscure. Anyone can presumably find out the wholesale pricing by simply e-mailing OpenSRS sales (I doubt someone would plunk down $95 to be a reseller without knowing the pricing first, so I assume sales must be telling people who ask). So, I guess my comment is that when it comes to information sharing, the default should be to keep it open, unless there's a good reason not to. The existing setup seems to have worked pretty well for the last four years. (Lots of things are discussed on the list that are of general interest, anyway; why not let the whole world enjoy our opinions about the fine management at Verisign, for example?) -- Robert L Mathews, Tiger Technologies http://www.tigertech.net/
