I have no idea what the income / costs would be, sincerely.

One of the reasons I am talking abound a Pegasus + Mercury bundle is for the comfort of the less skilled user. That could take the shape of an apparent Pegasus install, and the teacher would consider the install on his/her computer is the "master mail software", which is a concept fairly easy to grasp I think for that kind of user.

Of course setting the accounts just once on the "master computer" would help ease of use too, compared to writing on the server AND the client. That would be coherent too with teenagers not being allowed to modify their accounts.

The dot yo I chose is arbitrary, of course, the important thing is mail not being allowed to go to Internet. Maybe @mail.yo could be proposed as default for instance. Or anything else that makes clear it is not a common dot name. 

This is a project that has been discussed on a list of French network administrators for the secondary education. We guess such a bundle would be bought by many such schools.

AIM OF THE PROJECT

There are many teachers around the world who have to teach basic mail skills to children. They need a software that is easy to install and perfectly risk-free. Many of these teachers will want to install the system at the level of a single computers equipped room, because they need to work off-line, because they cannot access an intranet server, or find it easier not to use it.

MODIFICATIONS NEEDED

- Pmail and Mercury would be proposed in a single installer package. The teacher would check client+server for the teacher's computer, client only for the students' computers.

- Mercury would be pre-configured as to prevent any communication with the internet. That's an essential guarantee for teachers to work in a judicialy safe environment. Mercury would propose "mail.yo" as default name (sounds good for teenagers).

- Clients would install at the root of C: , in a folder configured as writeable by All Users, so as to create ONE mailbox per computer, and not personal mailboxes.

- Clients would forbid modification of account by users, would automatically recognize Mercury on the teacher's computer, and would request account creation from the server. The teacher would then only have to give the
user a name (with suggested "computer-01"...)

SUMMARY

The teacher would then only have to perform the following steps: Click on install on all computers, Click on "Teacher install" for own computer, click on OK for each new account.

That's the basis. Further improvements for school exercises might be imagined, but are not essential. An automatic payment suggestion might be added.

Hi, I was requested privately to give more explanations about this proposal. Here are more details about security.

Using the Internet in secondary education is becoming risky for teachers (porn, other illegal, well-meaning but wrong websites, etc...). You have to understand they are minors, which changes everything. The teacher can actually lose his/her job.

Usually, school mail systems for that kind of students will allow sending to and receiving from the internet, or even availability of a webmail interface from home. It is obvious that the school cannot provide to the student a mailbox which can contain property rights mp3, for instance. It is not at all a home environment.

Therefore the teachers would highly benefit from a mail system that GUARANTEES an impossibility to reach the internet. Besides, in order to realize basic exercises, it is also beneficial to work in a rarefied environment, like a biology or physics laboratory.

Well, Mercury is a server software, and your clients can connect to this machine. If you do the setup once, you'd only use MercuryP and MercuryS. Configure MercuryS so that it only allows connections from your internal networking clients, and not from the outside. The .yo domain, has to be controlled within a separate dns installation, and the install of Mercury or Pegasus Mail has little to do with this. However - when you've done your Mercury installation, simply save the installation folder into a compressed archive - and thats all it takes. Whenever you want to start fresh, delete the install directory, and extract all files from your pre-configured copy. This is one of the major advantages of Mercury compared to any database bound mailserver.

With Pegasus Mail, you go about it nearly the same way - but others have much more expertise at Pegasus Mail than I do.

When your config is done, a simple batch-script is all that it takes to re-set a whole school park. As with schools computers' you most likely have to have a scripted setup of the clients, since they so easily can and will get corrupted - and you need to get back on track with a minimal effort.

Hi Peter, thank you for your quick and nice answer.

The main scope of this project is to create a package that will actually bring some money to David Harris. Therefore, it seems to me necessary to provide a gui that will go a bit further than what a network admin will do with Mercury and Pegasus. In this case (for schools) there are two directions to follow, security and easy admin.

As far as security is concerned, I have a feeling that teachers would appreciate something that CANNOT access the Internet, not something that you configure not to access the Internet.

It also means the account settings on the client cannot be changed by the student. And stuff like that.

So you see, I'm not asking for much, it's just tuning of what is already there. Apart from that I know that I can already install that. I just want inexperienced teachers to buy it and trust it entirely without editing anything.


 

Well combining something that is there but cannot reach the internet isn't all that easy. Only way would be to make a special build of both apps, that locks the domain part into a bogus domain and strip MercuryS so that it doesn't allow any inbound connections unless the clients somehow authenticate etc.

There would be lots of holes in such a config, and most likely not the moneymaker even to cover the development, maintenance and support such a solution deserves. But, that is purely speculative on my part. It is as always, Davids decision.