I'm not paying for Beta quality software!

Written by Joe Cooper
That's not a question, but I understand your position.

That said, we had a lot of Virtualmin GPL users that desperately wanted this to happen sooner rather than later, and are more than willing to put up with a little hassle now and then in order to get the latest and greatest Virtualmin version available. Many of them know us from our years of work on Virtualmin GPL, Webmin, and Usermin. Others are just excited about a viable alternative to the current all-proprietary players in this field.

We also have a history of being extraordinarily nice to folks who have faith in us when things are in the early stages. Ask any of the Virtualmin Sponsors (yes, we capitalize it and speak of them fondly on a daily basis). They've received loads of software and T-shirts, and we're still not finished thanking them. When the Early Adopter period is over, every license will be extended for an extra six months past the end date of the adopter period so that they all get a full term usage of release quality software.

Early Adopters also get direct access to the developers of the software. When an Early Adopter makes a wish, we do what we can to grant it.

But we'll still be here when the Early Adopter period ends, and we hope you'll give us a try at that point.

So what's wrong with it? Every other software I've ever bought or used also had bugs...what's so different about you?

Written by Joe Cooper
There are a few issues that make Virtualmin Professional beta quality.

They are, in no particular order:

1. Many platforms are not yet supported or extensively tested. We plan to support at least: Fedora, CentOS, RHEL, SUSE, Mandrake, Debian, FreeBSD, Ubuntu, Gentoo and Slackware.
2. Several features are not yet setup by the installer, but we believe they should be. These include: restricted shell(s), SSL/TLS support in the mail server, firewall management.
3. Major and minor bugs that cause at least one customer discomfort. You can see the bugs that meet this description in the bug-tracker--if it is not a "wish", it counts as a bug that ought to be fixed or an aspect of the system that ought to be documented better. We won't wait until all bugs are resolved before ending the EA period, but all of the show-stoppers will be obliterated before doing so. In other words, even if all of the other stuff is done, a bunch of bugs will prevent EA from being ended. We won't call it stable until it really is.

We stubbornly believe that if people are paying for our software, they ought to get something really good. So, during the Early Adopter period, the good thing they get is a combination of generally good but not perfect software and a couple of guys who will stay up late and get up early, answer questions until they turn blue in the face, and generally work their asses off for the benefit of the folks buying the software. Oh, yeah, and we're also giving them cool T-shirts, bonus license months, the ability to directly effect the direction of the software, and the 50% discount mentioned earlier. We think that adds up to a really good deal. There's no way we'd work for anyone this cheap under any other circumstances.

What is this Early Adopter thing you keep talking about? Or, why are all of the software prices in the shop discounted 50% or more?

Written by Joe Cooper
The Early Adopter period is a sort of beta testing period. It is a way for us to get our software into wide-spread use quickly, while making it clear to those receiving the software that it is rapidly evolving.

The pricing of all of our software is discounted about 50% off of the retail price as a "Thank you!" to our bold early customers. We know that things aren't always going to work perfectly (but we aren't sure exactly what isn't working perfectly until we see it being used in a lot of different environments), so we don't feel it is fair to charge full price until we are confident that the software is practically perfect in every way (or at least lacks any major bugs).

What Operating Systems can I install Virtualmin Professional on?

Written by Joe Cooper

Right now the supported list is:

• RHEL 3/4 on i386 and x86_64
• CentOS 3/4 on i386 and x86_64
• Fedora Core 4/5/6 on i386 and x86_64
• OpenSUSE 10.0 on i386 and x86_64
• Mandriva 10.2 on i386
• Debian 3.1 (sarge) and 4.0 (etch) on i386 and x86_64
• Ubuntu 6.06, 6.06.1, 6.06TLS (dapper drake) on i386 and x86_64

At this time support is planned for the following systems:

• FreeBSD 6.2
• Gentoo 2007

When possible the x86_64 architecture will be supported on all Operating Systems, though this architecture will trail the release of the i386 version by a week or two.

When does it end?

Written by Joe Cooper
When we're satisfied that the product is reliable, easy to install, and performs exactly as advertised on every platform that we officially support. We expect this to occur sometime around the first quarter of 2007. We will extend the discounts for another month or so after the last Early Adopter release, just to be sure we've smashed all the big bugs.