>I guess it depends on which side of the coin you're looking at.  It's
>almost certain that we will be ditching VM entirely.  And considering
>that we're currently spending $2500 on VM's Listserv, another license
>for Lmail, and yet another on Unix's Listserv, the budget axers tend
>to get whack happy.  We very nearly lost ALL Lsoft products for this
>year because the unix bigots tend to love the freebe products (never
>mind performance).  $550 isn't a 'only costs' here anymore.  It gets
>compared to other software that's free (fair or not).
...
 
 
I'm not sure this whole discussion is really all that appropriate for the
list.  Business negotiations aren't really in the "charter."
 
For what it's worth, probably nothing, we are also budget constrained (who
isn't).  We're paying for unlimited licenses for both Unix and VM, with a
direction to get mail and list services off VM when AIX list and mail
services work as well.  (Not LSoft's fault, sendmail's.)
 
Anyway, of all the software we have, LSoft's provides about the best value
for the money we spend.  We've considered the free and fee alternatives as
a matter of business "due diligence" and found them less cost effective.
 
We think there's a lot more to be gained from moving from old generation
air and water cooled machines, old dasd, old mainframe-centric software
than from putting the screws to small software companies which are
providing low cost, quality products solving significant problems.  Of
course, Eric didn't get a nickel (or .05 ECU) from Listserv for years while
the rest of us were happily using his product.
 
If the Unix people want to provide the same level of service with free
products, let them show that they can do it with some pilot lists.  If they
succeed, you can make one business decision.  If they flunk, you can make
another.  No one sends checks off to LSoft because they feel Eric needs
charity.  "You get what you pay for," as John Arbuckle used to say.
 
Enough of lecture #3765.  Perhaps the rest of this could be moved to
e-mail.  Chris, this is not intended as a flame, just our site's
perspective.
   Rich Hintz
   University of California
   [log in to unmask] (temporary address)