From: Walter Luffman <wluffman@usit.net>
Subject: About Maximus
Date: Friday, April 02, 1999 5:22 PM

Some participants here have been wondering whether or not Maximus BBS
software is freeware, so I went to the Lanius Corporation website
(www.lanius.com) to see what the publisher had to say.

As I read it, Maximus and Squish are no longer being sold but they are
still available for free download.  Apparently, Lanius decided to
discontinue development of both products after releasing Y2K patches
for them, and those patches are now available.

Maximus has long been available as freeware for noncommercial use.
The information I read on the Lanius website carefully avoided saying
that Maximus will now be free for commercial use; instead, it gave the
impression that currently registered commercial users will be able to
get support direct from Lanius, but no new registrations (free or
otherwise) will be accepted.

All participants in this group are elcome to visit www.lanius.com,
read the information available there, and come to their own
conclusions.  As far as I can tell, Maximus and Squish are now
orphaned software for all but those commercial users who paid their
registration fees before the current policy went into effect.  I
certainly hope my interpretation is wrong, because Maximus is one of
the best BBS packages I've ever seen; but unless Lanius intends to
transfer ownership of Max and Squish to an outside developer, I
believe the current releases will be the last for these fine products.
