Re: [webmin-l] Virtualmin Professional

[Craig W. <cra...@az...>]

On Wed, 2005-09-14 at 14:57 -0500, Joe Cooper wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I just wanted to give folks here on the list a quick heads up about a 
> new project that Jamie and I have been working on for a few months.  It 
> is a version of Virtualmin intended for professional hosting 
> environments and is called, shockingly enough, Virtualmin Professional.
> 
> In order to answer the requirements of commercial hosting providers 
> (i.e. reliable support, automated installation and updates, extremely 
> tight security practices, a branded product that is saleable, 
> integration with other tools like billing, and a nice consistent theme 
> or two or three or six), we've founded a new company called Virtualmin, Inc.
> 
> We've released an Early Adopter version for sale on the website (heavily 
> discounted, to reward those who are willing to suffer through being an 
> early adopter) for RHEL, CentOS, and Fedora operating systems.  We plan 
> to wrap up installers for a half dozen more systems over the next few days.
> 
> I can also answer a couple questions that are probably springing into 
> some peoples minds:
> 
> - The GPL version of Virtualmin will continue to exist and be 
> maintained.  In fact, we'll be rolling up a new release in a few days. 
> Virtualmin GPL features will trail the Professional version by some 
> amount, but the GPL version will always get bugfixes and security fixes 
> on the same schedule as the Professional version.  We are not holding 
> Virtualmin GPL users over a barrel to upgrade to the commercial version, 
> we're merely offering an upgraded version with some features and 
> benefits that some folks will find useful.
> 
> - This doesn't effect Webmin or Usermin in any way, and development will 
> continue at the same pace it always has.
> 
> - Plugin Modules will tend to be compatible across both versions, and 
> many of the new features we're planning will be added via plugin modules 
> (most of which will also be free and under a GPL license).
> 
> Anyway, if you're a Virtualmin user (or would like to be but haven't 
> been able to due to lack of the above-mentioned reasons), you might find 
> like to visit us at http://www.virtualmin.com and see if Virtualmin 
> Professional is a good choice for you.
> 
> There are forums, where one can discuss both versions of Virtualmin, 
> along with a lot of new documentation and other stuff...more features to 
> the site are being added all the time.  Feel free to stop by, sign up, 
> and join in.
> 
> If you have any questions or comments please feel free to contact me.
> 
> BTW-If you were a Virtualmin Sponsor in the past, and you haven't heard 
> from me personally, please drop me an email.  Other folks who've donated 
> to Virtualmin in the past will also be hearing from me this week.
> 
----
good for you guys - I think that is a logical extension of the
webmin/virtualmin product.

Hosting is not my thing so I haven't played with virtualmin at all in
any form.

It does seem to me from my reasonably good familiarity with webmin and
my minimal familiarity with usermin that:

- webmail at my last look was very minimal and should support things
like IMAP folders/IMAP logins

- Better LDAP management/integration

- Better Cyrus integration - especially because cyrus-imapd is such a
natural for virtual users/virtual domains

- Support for Sieve editing by users

Not that I haven't been able to make good use of webmin but I have
pretty much eschewed usermin in favor of Horde 3/IMP 4/Ingo etc. because
it fills the gaps of Sieve/IMAP and a much more robust webmail
interface.

Just thought I would pass along my comments.

Craig