RE: [cobalt-users] Status of the Cobalt Mailing Lists

["Michael D. Bathrick" <prez@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Craig,

As a longtime user of Sun products and Cobalt products, I'm concerned
with the attitude expressed here.  I have been using Sun since the old
IPX days, still have a few Ultra 1, 2, 5's working here as well as some
newer equipment.  I've contributed to the bottom line of Sun long enough
and have run my own ISP long enough to know that ditching this list is
not going to materially affect Sun's bottom line.

These folks are your customers.  It isn't marketing wise to treat these
potential future customers in the manner you are.  Remember, they were
fanatics for the Cobalt product line - you should be trying to win them
over to a Sun product line, instead of insulting them.

Michael D. Bathrick
President
BerkshireNet, Inc
126 Fenn Street
Pittsfield, MA 01201
(413) 442-7805

-----Original Message-----
From: cobalt-users-admin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:cobalt-users-admin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Tuesday, May 04, 2004 4:12 PM
To: cobalt-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; cobalt-security@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx;
cobalt-developers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [cobalt-users] Status of the Cobalt Mailing Lists


Because the unplanned outage of the Cobalt lists this weekend seems to
have 
caused another flurry of "what now?" emails, I guess it is time to
address 
this issue for good.

I think that it is time for these lists to go away.  Several reasons for
this:

1) RaQ 550, the last Sun Cobalt branded product, reached its End of Life
in 
February 2004.  Sun has committed to certain support guidelines as part
of our 
EOSL policy, including maintaining the knowledgebase and Support Forums 
located at http://cobalt-forum.sun.com/forum/ for three full years.

2) I have had an ongoing problem with users of the lists demanding that
I 
delete or modify their posts in the list archives.  I have been unable
to come 
up with an answer to those requests that satisfies the users, me, and
the 
maintainers of Sun's Privacy Policy.

3) The system on which the lists are hosted is not getting any younger,
and as 
many of you noticed this weekend is not very reliable.  It is probably
not 
going to be replaced -- see item #1 above.  Virus and spam traffic into
the 
server is also out of control and it would require significant effort to
put 
decent filtering in place and then maintain the filters indefinitely.

My plan is to shut the cobalt-users, cobalt-security, and
cobalt-developers 
lists down on Friday, May 14.

I am open to suggestions about other ways Sun can continue to support
the 
Cobalt user community.  One option already mentioned has been a Sun
Cobalt 
area on the BigAdmin systems administration portal located at 
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/.  Mailing lists, unfortunately, are not a
feature 
of BigAdmin, but I would like to hear the user community's feedback on
the 
portal and will be glad to follow up with that team if there is an
interest.

Please feel free to send me any comments or questions.  Thanks...

-- 
...Craig

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