On Mon, 14 Aug 1995 15:36:55 CDT Chris Barnes <[log in to unmask]> said: >Presumably, Lsoft would have developed and produced the servers anyway >(for other sites, competitive reasons, etc), so that is a sunk cost. It's a cost that's very real (we support 13 brands of unix - the hardware costs alone are a significant investment), and that someone has got to pay for, somehow. So, the issue at hand is who pays for this, and we've chosen to make all our unix customers share the bill, rather than giving the traditional VM sites free access to the unix version and making the unix-only sites foot the bill. While there is no perfect solution and a case can be made for just about any reasonable scheme, I suspect that you've never tried to talk a unix bigot into paying extra so that mainframe sites can get free access to the unix version :-) >I can understand the maintenance/support for extra servers, but I would >suspect that the cost would be nominal (more nominal than the current >5pt license that we're paying now). Well, but the license you're paying for only costs $550/year, and that figure includes both license and maintenance. Even if it were a pure maintenance cost, how much qualified manpower can you buy with $550 in the DC area? :-) Or, if you prefer a more corporate-oriented angle, how much would it cost you to do without the $550 unix license and deliver all your mail on VM? :-) Eric