Mary,
 
The  new  pricing  structure  (it's called  "gradated  charging")  is  in
addition to the  existing one, and does not replace  it. It was developed
for people  who have a small  departmental computer and only  need to run
about 5-10  mailing lists. They don't  want to pay the  normal price, but
then we can't start selling LISTSERV for $500-1000 to everyone or we'd go
bankrupt. So,  we're giving people  the option to  pay a fixed  price for
unlimited use, or then pay-per-list, whichever suits their needs best. We
expect the  "traditional" LISTSERV sites to  purchase unlimited licenses,
because  they run  enough lists  to justify  the investment  (and because
gradated charging becomes more expensive  once you reach a certain number
of lists).  The gradated prices  simply allow  us to expand  into another
market, which was up to now  restricted to free list managers. We believe
that  managers  of  small  departmental  machines  will  consider  paying
$500-1000 a  year for better service,  as they buy PC  software regularly
for just that kind of prices. We doubt, however, that they will pay $3000
a year for a service they do not need - they'd rather buy a new PC, then.
 
The pay-per-subscriber adjustment  is rather moderate (a  list with 5,000
subscribers only costs  5 times as much  as a list with  20). It reflects
the hard  fact that larger lists  are more complex to  operate, usually a
lot more customized  than simple lists (which are often  "cloned" from an
existing  list), and  result in  more frequent  calls to  L-Soft support.
Qualified technical manpower is expensive, and each additional point only
represents a bit more than 2h of technical assistance a year (less if you
account for the  fact that gradated charges include a  license rental, ie
help funding future developments).
 
  Eric