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Comments
6 Responses to “EZproxy acquired by OCLC”
I think this means that it is time for an open-source equivalent to ezproxy. In the past there was no point to such an effort because ezproxy was dirt-cheap and the support was good, even though the documentation and architecture of the application were poor. All things considered, the balance in the past was tipped firmly in favour of the application.
However, I think we can expect that the next major version will come with large licensing fees and over time support will slip to mediocre. An open-source version would at least give us good application architecture and affordability (and I suspect better documentation than what exists today).
I heard the price was going up by a factor of 20!
If true that’d certainly be a shame, but wow has this program been an incredible value for such a long time. If it’s still available at the current rate (and it appears to be – http://www.usefulutilities.com/purchase/) I’d sure encourage folks to buy now! I hope Chris Z. made enough to retire!
OCLC acquires EzProxy
OCLC has acquired EzProxy. – Via Richard via the Distant Librarian
I figured (based on how many schools had the software and art $495 a pop) he had made in excess of a million.
But it was a great product for so cheap, so we all got a good deal for a while (we’ve had it since 2002 for $495!).
It’s been several months since the acquisition, and in my opinion, tech support of this product has definately slipped well below the level of where it used to be before.
I’m usually able to figure out solutions to most problems with Ezproxy on my own (or just look them up somewhere), but every once in a while I’ve hit one that’s just over my head. In the past in cases like that I’d contact Useful Utilities and Chris Z. would jump in and solve it pretty quickly. He was amazing.
Well, we hit a problem with a new online product.. The first since OCLC acquired EZproxy, and I had to contact their tech support for the first time. The result of that (or rather the lack of result) was very disturbing.
A full day after sending them the request, they sent me an email telling me to go post my question to the listserv.(!?) I did so, as I didn’t have a lot of other options, but no one ever responded with a solution. I wound up blocking out a lot of time that I was supposed to be spending on other projects (we’re opening a new branch) and using wireshark to figure the problem out myself.
A day after I had worked out a solution on my own, OCLC got back to me out of the blue with a “solution” that wouldn’t have worked..it was completely wrong.
Fortunately, in this case I was able to figure this out on my own. What concerns me is that if/when we hit a problem that absolutely requires real tech suppport, I’m afraid we are out of luck. I told our administration that it’s probably time to start looking for other solutions. The clock is ticking.