On Thu, 16 Sep 1993 09:30:12 EDT "Steven P. Roder"
<[log in to unmask]> said:
>I must have missed something here. I can not (yet) recommend this to my
>management, since I don't even know what the fees will be! Is it not
>true that Eric and L-Soft are still negotiating with CREN for some kind
>of licensing agreement similar to that with EARN?
CREN is currently surveying its membership in order to decide whether or
not to license LISTSERV for its members. Dwight's message was in reaction
to this survey, which should have been sent to UB as well, but possibly
to someone else. It is indeed a sort of catch 22: CREN is asking you how
much money you'd be willing to pay to license LISTSERV, and they'll use
that information to decide whether they want to get a volume license. You
won't know whether CREN is getting this license until the end of the
month, or whatever that deadline was.
The yearly unit prices for LISTSERV+LMail were $3325 for "category II"
service (new versions + between-release fixes + customer support), and
$2161.25 for "category III" (only new versions). L-Soft offered a 50%
volume discount to CREN if they'd license all current CREN sites under
L-Soft's volume discount conditions (one bill, one check, no payment
delays, etc). L-Soft needs to hire 3 programmers and a technical writer
as soon as possible (some part time), and most people are unwilling to
quit their job for a 3-month contract, even if they are not very happy
with what they have now. Development is basically stalled until we
collect money from the US customers, which represent the bulk of LISTSERV
sites. The lump payment from the CREN contract would allow L-Soft to
recruit immediately and prevent development from being delayed 3-4 months
while individual organizations have to be convinced to license our
products. This is why L-Soft has concentrated on the CREN contract so far
and has not been sending price lists and business cases to CREN members,
to avoid confusing the issue. Unfortunately it seems that the issue got
confused anyway :-)
As I see it, three things can happen:
1. CREN decides to get the contract at the end of the month. You save 50%
on the prices and development can start as soon as possible.
2. CREN decides not to get the contract. L-Soft will spend the next 3-4
months marketing its offerings and collecting enough money to offer
one-year contracts, and you won't get any discount. Eventually, more
money will be collected from the US customers (since more than half
are expected to be willing to pay), but development will be late by at
least one quarter. This is not good for either party.
3. CREN does not decide anything in a reasonable amount of time. L-Soft
will time out, assume CREN does not want the contract and follow
course of action #2. We will have a big mess as people will not know
what to recommend to their management, given the lack of final answer
from CREN. On the other hand, L-Soft can't wait forever for CREN to
make up their mind. I am of course impatient to see the non-VM
versions of LISTSERV take shape, but most importantly, the business
side of L-Soft is not happy at this surprise survey, given that the
CREN/EARN/L-Soft meeting was decided in the beginning of July and
there was plenty of time to determine membership interest over the
summer (plus we always thought it was obvious that CREN members are
interested in LISTSERV, since this is about the only service CREN can
offer which has no Internet equivalent). Anyway, from then on, all
sorts of things can happen. If people recommend licenses to their
management anyway, L-Soft will collect money and then CREN may or may
not decide to get a global license for the remaining sites, at a
reduced discount (due to lower volume). If on the other hand people
recommend waiting, and CREN still doesn't make a decision, L-Soft will
have no other option but to withdraw the CREN offer to get out of this
chicken-and-egg situation.
I hope this clarifies the situation :-)
Eric
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