On Sun, 18 Jul 1993 12:54:28 -0400 (EDT) "Tansin A. Darcos & Company"
<[log in to unmask]> said:
>That is extremely generous on your part. How much money has Educom
>gotten out of licensing Listserv? Bitnet connections wouldn't be worth
>10c without the Listserv and mailer capabilities. $2,000,000?
>$5,000,000? For which, I think, your share was exactly nil; and they
>didn't even want to consider contracting with you for further releases?
Please, let's stay clear of the dangerous mud-slinging tangent. First, it
should be noted that any benefits EDUCOM might have derived would be only
indirect. The US part of BITNET is run by CREN, which contracts EDUCOM to
provide a number of services. I doubt EDUCOM has much influence in the
policy decisions of CREN and, since CREN does not contract EDUCOM to
provide the LISTSERV service, there is no reason EDUCOM should try to
contract me to offer it. Last year, CREN collected $1,604,330 from its
members (plus interests, late bills and other minor items) and $878,909
were paid to EDUCOM. The figures are $2,426,776 and $912,411 for 1991,
the previous statements are probably available but I don't have them
online. I don't know how much is left once they have paid the staff and
rent, but certainly nowhere near the figures you mentioned. I don't even
know if EDUCOM is profit or non-profit. Anyway, as far as I am concerned
EDUCOM is simply not involved here.
It is fair to say that CREN has drawn significant benefits from free
access to LISTSERV. Quite possibly seven figures. This was one reason I
was upset at the contents of the RFP. But L-Soft's policy is to forget
any possible offense or personal problem that might have existed before
LISTSERV became a commercial product. Not out of weakness, but simply
because there is little point in fighting over old disagreements which
were, to a large extent, caused by people who have now moved on to other
pastures. L-Soft was certainly in a position to convince EARN sites to
pay major licensing charges to upgrade from LISTEARN, and with a
performance improvement of a factor of 15 on expensive IBM hardware the
business case would be a piece of cake, but we felt it would be unfair to
make individual sites pay for mistakes they had little or no control
over. Furthermore we felt that EARN and L-Soft stood to benefit from each
other and really should be working together. So EARN is now licensing
access to new versions of LISTSERV and LMail at a very advantageous price
- a price low enough to fit in their very tight budget without any major
problem, and which made the politically loaded decision of phasing out
LISTEARN pass the board painlessly. The users benefit doubly, through
access to better software and through the removal of the "almost but not
quite compatible" EARN version of LISTSERV, which will decrease user
confusion and make it a lot easier to write documentation. On the other
hand, EARN is giving L-Soft some money to help the development of the VMS
version of LISTSERV happen sooner, and they will maintain topological
tables which will make it possible to extend the DISTRIBUTE protocol to
the Internet. We benefit from the improvements to our products, EARN
users benefit from better and cheaper services, and EARN benefits because
whatever makes its users think they get their money's worth is good for
EARN. Everyone is happy, and this is a lot better than a LISTSERV vs
LISTEARN war, which would have brought L-Soft more money in the short
term but would not have had the same user benefits (which L-Soft sees as
long-term business advantage).
I can't tell you what CREN and L-Soft are going to do because we are
still negotiating (and of course the negotiations are confidential), but
I can tell you that L-Soft hopes to reach the same kind of business
relationship with CREN that it now has with EARN, and that we have
offered similar low prices to make such an arrangement attractive to
CREN. The alternative is a RFP-vs-LISTSERV war from which the users
cannot possibly benefit, as L-Soft would have to turn to individual
members for licensing and the issue of "CREN membership vs LISTSERV
license fee" would inevitably be raised, with the obvious result that
many organizations would leave CREN and lose the NJE service before an
Internet alternative is available. In fact, if CREN were to take a really
aggressive attitude and directly challenge L-Soft's business interests
with the RFP, we could be forced to make offers of the type "50% off your
license if you drop your CREN membership", which would be extremely
counter-productive. Because the alternative is so grim, I am quite
confident that an agreement will be reached.
>Did anyone even bother to offer you any thanks for your work?
Many people have, and in general I seldom have problems with individuals
about this. There will always be idiots to insult you for not having
implemented some gadget or other within 24h of their last flame, but you
quickly learn to ignore them. Most of the problems I had were with
organizations.
>My advice: charge *something*, even if it is a ridiculous fraction of
>the usual price. People don't respect that which they get for free.
That was one reason for turning LISTSERV into a commercial product ;-) We
expect to "charge" manpower rather than hard currency. There is not much
we can do with a small amount of hard currency that people will be very
reluctant to part with. It will create hard feelings and we won't get
much in return. Manpower can be put to better use, even if all the
development work we ever have to do is too impractical to locate in
another country. If we have an arrangement that says someone works for us
2 days a month in exchange of X free licenses, we can send him around in
town to describe the benefits of LISTSERV to other universities. This can
be an interesting job, and something good for that person's career,
whereas we increase our market share and potential future benefits, when
and if the economy gets better. It is common for top scientists from
third world countries to be invited to do research in the US. If they
were used to LISTSERV at home, they will demand LISTSERV in their new
research lab, and we will make a profit. Similarly, we may locate
competent programmers who are interested in working for us, or selling
our products to corporations which, while not quite as rich as US ones,
can afford our license charges. There many ways in which we can make a
long-term profit with that approach. With a $1k check covering an entire
country, we can maybe buy a new PC.
Eric
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