In all seriousness, though, being the Open Source nerds that we are, we cleverly trick our users into learning lots of interesting stuff about Apache and Linux and other stuff. When things need to be complex (as things occasionally do in a virtual hosting deployment) we don't make up our own complexities and leaky abstractions and slap them on top of the existing ones--we allow the user to see through to the Apache/Postfix/BIND complexities. For example, with redirect rules and match patterns. Very basic match patterns can be setup automagically, with very little effort...but when things get complex, the user can dig down to see the actual Apache rules. Likewise for almost all of the services we manage, if the user needs fine-grained control they can get to it without having to completely break out of the comforting Virtualmin UI. Baby steps to system administration competence.
We also spend a lot of time in our forums talking about the whys and wherefores rather than just the "Click here, click there, and save it".
We genuinely love the software our products manage (mostly). And we've both written books on the topic of system administration, in total ~1100 printed pages, which have now been combined into a massive wiki ( http://doxfer.com/Webmin ) and that's also a pretty good source of traffic and potential buyers for our products. Interestingly, our books are still selling a reasonable amount five years after publication (folks like tangible products, I guess).
We actually view education as a good marketing tool. The more people know about system administration, the more they'll understand why our products are dramatically better than cPanel or Plesk. The first time someone hits the command line with our competitors products they'll learn a hard lesson in the difference between template generated configuration files, and a product that understands the configuration files and respects non-generated directives and comments and file order. People don't go back to other products after spending enough time with Virtualmin and Webmin.
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Summary: Author doesn't know linux and apparently used Virtualmin's product to avoid learning it.
Hooray! We love it when that happens.
In all seriousness, though, being the Open Source nerds that we are, we cleverly trick our users into learning lots of interesting stuff about Apache and Linux and other stuff. When things need to be complex (as things occasionally do in a virtual hosting deployment) we don't make up our own complexities and leaky abstractions and slap them on top of the existing ones--we allow the user to see through to the Apache/Postfix/BIND complexities. For example, with redirect rules and match patterns. Very basic match patterns can be setup automagically, with very little effort...but when things get complex, the user can dig down to see the actual Apache rules. Likewise for almost all of the services we manage, if the user needs fine-grained control they can get to it without having to completely break out of the comforting Virtualmin UI. Baby steps to system administration competence.
We also spend a lot of time in our forums talking about the whys and wherefores rather than just the "Click here, click there, and save it".
We genuinely love the software our products manage (mostly). And we've both written books on the topic of system administration, in total ~1100 printed pages, which have now been combined into a massive wiki ( http://doxfer.com/Webmin ) and that's also a pretty good source of traffic and potential buyers for our products. Interestingly, our books are still selling a reasonable amount five years after publication (folks like tangible products, I guess).
We actually view education as a good marketing tool. The more people know about system administration, the more they'll understand why our products are dramatically better than cPanel or Plesk. The first time someone hits the command line with our competitors products they'll learn a hard lesson in the difference between template generated configuration files, and a product that understands the configuration files and respects non-generated directives and comments and file order. People don't go back to other products after spending enough time with Virtualmin and Webmin.