A number of people privately asked me for more information about the
commercialization of LISTSERV, and some expressed their concern about
what would happen if they suddenly had to pay to keep using the software.
While I originally planned to make this announcement after the completion
of negotiations with the major networks, I guess circumstances now
dictate otherwise. First, the most important: don't panic, nobody is
going to pull the rug from under you. You can keep using the version of
LISTSERV you have now for as long as you want and without having to pay
anything. You are protected by the license agreement you had with me when
you ordered the software. The change in policy only applies to new
versions, and to new licenses of existing versions for sites not already
running the code.
LISTSERV and LMail started being available as commercial products in
June, from a company called L-Soft international. I am still working for
SUNET and will remain with them at least until February 1994, which is
when my contract expires, and probably for another year part-time, after
which they will probably dump BITNET and all IBM hardware, and will no
longer need me. I get royalties on the sales of LISTSERV, of course, and
I also have management responsibilities within L-Soft and complete
control over LISTSERV development. What this means in practice is that
there will be no major change in philosophy and your users will not have
to adapt to the kind of fundamental changes usually brought about by
changes of ownership. There will be changes of course, but they will
happen as before - as smoothly as possible, given the time frame and
circumstances. At any rate, you don't have to worry about finding out
that the database functions have been removed overnight because they
might have impacted the sales of some other product, or anything like
that.
Anyway, a few weeks ago a transition plan was drafted, and we found out
that we didn't have many options to choose from, nor was there any
serious problem with the "obvious" choice. So we decided that the next
versions of LISTSERV and LMail would only be available to paying
customers, and that I would stop handing out free licenses to new BITNET
sites on the 1st of September. Informal support will continue until that
date, under the same conditions as before. Note that this means that,
once a new version is out and solves a certain problem, fixes are not
provided for older versions unless the problem is a very serious one.
After the 1st of September, only paying customers will be able to submit
bug reports and receive fixes or other forms of customer assistance. The
public lists (LSTSRV-L, LSTOWN-L and LMAIL-L) will remain open to all,
and will continue to provide the same kind of informal help as before. In
addition, L-Soft plans to hire a LISTSERV expert to provide a higher
level of customer support than presently possible, and to assist in
various aspects of LISTSERV development. Since most questions are asked
on the public lists, this means the quality of LISTSERV support will
improve for both paying and non-paying customers (which we like to see in
an optimistic light as prospective, not-yet-paying customers :-) ). Now,
I am sure there will be people bold enough to complain that we aren't
fixing bugs in the older, free version, or that I did not place the last
free versions in the public domain just before making it a commercial
product so that anyone can offer his own free and "improved" version of
LISTSERV without having to worry about lawsuits, and all I can say is
that the conditions you have just read are just about as far as a
for-profit company can stretch it, and elicited more frowns than standing
ovations at first hearing. The September deadline may seem a bit close,
but that is because we expect new versions to be out by that time and I
cannot do much in terms of support for old versions; I don't want people
to say "But you promised to keep supporting us until 1994!". Version 1.7f
will have been out for about 5 months by the September deadline, so if
there are still problems they are unlikely to be critically serious.
Now, here is where we stand. About a week ago, EARN and L-Soft signed a
licensing agreement granting all EARN sites access to both LISTSERV and
LMail. This means EARN sites can upgrade from LISTEARN at their earliest
convenience, and will receive new versions and fixes as they become
available. Contact the EARN office for more information on the ordering
procedure (there is nothing to pay, you just have to sign a license
agreement). Volume licenses are also being negotiated with both CREN and
NetNorth for their respective memberships, and in fact I had expected to
delay this announcement until I was in a position to say something more
concrete and positive, but at this point it would be inappropriate for me
to say anything at all beyond the fact that negotiations have started and
that there hasn't been enough time yet to reach a business agreement.
Finally, the only reason we haven't started negotiations with the other
cooperating networks is a very tight schedule and the time of year, plus
the fact that some countries simply cannot afford to pay US-level
licensing fees in hard currencies. Some of these countries may be premium
markets in 5 years, and we have to find a suitable way to give them the
help they need while bearing in mind that L-Soft is not a branch of the
Salvation Army. In fact, it would help if the technical contact for these
networks would drop me a note with some information about their future
plans for expansion, what role they see for LISTSERV in their country,
and so on. L-Soft is very interested in cooperative agreements where we
would provide software at a high discount rate, or even free, but would
receive something useful in exchange.
At this point, I think the best thing for non-EARN sites to do is wait
and see what kind of agreement L-Soft negotiates with their respective
networks. L-Soft will of course license directly to individual sites that
wish to have their own license, and I probably shouldn't be telling you
not to go buy one right away :-), but since I value long-term benefits
over short-term ones I will anyway. Unless you have plans to leave BITNET
in the near future and would thus have little use for a license tied to
your membership in a certain network, I don't see any reason not to wait
a month or two and see what your networking organization can offer you.
To be on the safe side, you can have your lawyers review L-Soft's
licensing agreement (GA9305-2.PS from LISTSERV@SEARN) so that you are in
a position to place an order quickly should your networking organization
decide not to get a global license. The agreement does not bind you in
any way as long as you don't order anything, and once it is signed you
can place an order with a simple FAX referring to the agreement by number
and receive the software in a matter of hours or at most days.
Finally, I thought that you would want to know what L-Soft plans to do
with this money. There will be a benefit to make, of course, but a lot
will be reinvested in new developments specifically targeted at the needs
of the present BITNET community. We all know that BITNET is unlikely to
last more than a few years, and that its unique technology is not yet
available on the Internet. Unfortunately, management sometimes takes
statements like "SENDFILE is a totally useless anachronism, FTP is all
you will ever need and the proof that SENDFILE is useless is that the
Internet would already have it otherwise" at face value, just because
they were made by someone whose name they saw in some computer magazine
or other, and thousands of users end up losing a valuable service that
they had come to rely on. L-Soft's strategic mission is to adapt LISTSERV
to the needs of the future NJE-less, VM-less community, and to develop
new software that will make the traditional BITNET services (such as
SENDFILE or TELL) available to users without NJE connectivity. Should we
have to develop new protocols for TCP/IP SENDFILE or TELL, we would make
the protocol descriptions publicly available so that other people can
develop implementations for systems we do not support (we do not expect
to develop these protocols alone, but on the other hand we won't abandon
a project just because a public list has turned into a permanent flame
fest). As far as LISTSERV is concerned, we are going to make a
"bilingual" version that can run with mostly the same source code under
both VM and VMS, thus ensuring full compatibility while lowering the cost
of running LISTSERV. The next step will be to port it to Windows NT,
which is very close to VMS and will further decrease the price tag of the
"entry level" LISTSERV configuration. TCP/IP TELL and SENDFILE will of
course be integrated as they become available. We also plan to develop
click-and-go user interfaces to LISTSERV for personal computers. None of
this would have been possible without money to back all these nice
dreams, and that is the main reason why I decided to turn LISTSERV into a
commercial product. After spending years trying to convince various
organizations to do these sorts of things and being told, in essence,
that "It is a good idea, but it is a lot of money and how can we be sure
that it is a better investment than an 8.7% certificate of deposit in the
bank", I decided to try an approach with better chances of success and
more exciting long-term prospects for me.
Eric
|