From: Paul Robinson <[log in to unmask]>
Organization: Tansin A. Darcos & Company, Silver Spring, MD USA
-----
 
ET> A number  of people  privately asked  me for  more information
  > about the commercialization  of LISTSERV,  and some  expressed
  > their  concern about what would happen if they suddenly had to
  > pay to keep using the software.
 
Hmm, most of these places had to pay for the computers they
have, the electricity they use and the salaries of the people
they hire.  Yet they seem to think that *you* aren't entitled
to make money off of the efforts of your ability.  Typical
socialist attitude that is far too prevalent at educational
institutions (especially in the U.S.) and has damn near
destroyed most of Europe, as amy philosophy based on stealing
would.
 
ET> You can keep  using the version of LISTSERV you have now for
  > as long as you want and  without having to pay anything. You
  > are protected by the license  agreement you had with me when
  > you  ordered the  software.
 
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?
 
ET> So we decided that  the next versions  of  LISTSERV and LMail
  > would only be available to paying customers, and that I would
  > stop handing out free licenses to new BITNET sites on the 1st
  > of September.
 
Again, extremely generous.  Did anyone even bother to offer you
any thanks for your work?  Or has it been a non-stop stream of
complaints about the things they aren't getting from software
they didn't even pay you anything for?  As soon as you decided
to make it commercial, you probably should have stopped further
distributions except for contract requirements.
 
If you will permit me to do so, of all the people who have used
your program, *I* for one will say thank you for your efforts.
 
ET> Now, I am  sure there will  be people bold enough  to complain
  > that we aren't fixing bugs in the older, free version, or that
  > I did not place the last free versions  in  the public  domain
  > just  before making it  a commercial product
 
You are neither a common carrier nor a philanthropic organization.
You are under no obligation - and no one has a right to expect
you - to give away any property of yours, especially something
as valuable as this program is.  If they don't like it, they
can use the Greek list manager program or they can use Majordomo
or Concierge or whatever the name of that other one is.  Or
write their own if they don't like what's out there.
 
ET> I don't want people to say "But you promised to keep
  > supporting us until 1994!".
 
They expect someone (you) to keep a promise (which I'm not
sure that it is one) to offer them free support for something
that you have received exactly zero in payments for.  How
interesting.  How long would they expect to survive themselves
on a system like that?  Or the Electric Company?
 
Committment works both ways.  What exactly, have they offered,
for their complaints of alleged "lack of promise"?  Where were
the offers of assistance to get you a Microvax so you could
develop the program further?  Exactly what have they done besides
complain?  What exactly has been offered to make it easier for
you to work?
 
ET> Finally, the only  reason we haven't started negotiations
  > with the other cooperating networks is a very tight
  > schedule and the time of year, plus the  fact  that some
  > countries  simply  cannot  afford to  pay  US-level
  > licensing fees in hard currencies.
 
So you find out what they can pay and charge accordingly.  In
the U.S., prescription drugs cost about ten times what they
cost in Mexico.  Those people who are howling about the expense
of medical drugs seem to forget that people in Mexico can't pay
the kind of rates someone in the U.S. can.  They also forget
that the company may be taking a loss there in order to keep
market share, or it may be cheaper to distribute there, e.g. that
it is subsidizing the sales in Mexico with some profits from
U.S. Sales.  They also forget that drugs cost money because the
government or insurance companies subsidize almost everything else
in the Medical Industry.
 
In the United States, a call from the U.S. to Moscow costs
about U.S. $2.25 (plus or minus 1 cent) for the first minute
using all three Long Distance companies (AT&T, MCI and Sprint).
However, a call from Moscow to Washington, DC, will cost a
caller there about 6 cents ($0.06) a minute, if I remember correctly.
Yet in local charges, 6 cents im Moscow is the purchasing power
equivalent in the U.S. of about $6.00.
 
ET> L-Soft is very interested in cooperative  agreements where we
  > would provide software  at a high discount rate, or even free,
  > but would receive something useful in exchange.
 
Three years ago, in the U.S. most people bought cars on time
payments and paid a high down payment and high monthly payments.
Today, more than half of all automobile transactions involve a l
ease of an automobile where the "buyer" pays a lot less in
downpayment and a lot less per month, with some leases having the
proviso that when they finish the lease, they pay the difference
between what the car is worth after depreciation, minus the amount of
usage taken over a standard figure.  Some leases are essentially
the same as a sale; at the end of the lease, you can walk away
and owe nothing, buy the car for the residual, or start a new
lease with a brand new car.
 
This has caused some people who would have purchased an Oldsmobile
to lease a Cadillac or a Mercedes Benz.
 
In essence, the automobile companies are using a reduced-price
strategy to build brand loyalty.  They used to offer a rebate
of the purchase price, e.g. a $1000 kickback after the financing
had gone through.  Now they simply reduce the cost per month
instead.
 
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.  Or lease the software to them for a reduced
rate with an increase down the line as the country becomes
more able to afford things.
 
If you have to, find a local agent who can trade something
there for something else, e.g. make barter deals if you have
to.  Charge them *something*, or they'll resent you for your
giving them something of value and not making them pay for it.
 
As soon as people think they can get something for nothing,
they see the "donor" as a milch cow from which they can
demand still more.  And resent him for not giving 200% of his
capability.
 
ET> Some of these countries may be premium markets in 5 years,
  > and we have to find a suitable way  to give them the help
  > they need while  bearing in mind that L-Soft is not a
  > branch of the Salvation Army.
 
And Electronic Mail is not food supplies or water either.
E-Mail is a higher level abstraction up the chain of
industrial development.  It's a step in advancement of a
technological base.  But someone has to pay for that
development.  Fail to make it known that software costs
money to create and must be paid for, and you encourage
piracy.  If they don't have to pay anything for the program,
why should they care if they give it away or copy some other
company's program?
 
ET> Finally, I thought that you would want to know what
  > L-Soft plans to do with this money.
 
Eric, I am very surprised at you.  And, as a typical American,
I'll be crude about it and point out that you should be proud
to realize that's nobody else's goddamn business how much money
you make selling things or what percentage of profit you make.
If you provide something of value, you're entitled to charge
whatever market price you think you can get, and make money
off of it.  If you want to say that you will make a profit and
part of that profit will be invested toward making the product
better, that's one thing.  But nobody should apologize for their
honest efforts in a free market.
 
It's that vein of resentment of those who are better off than
others that the current President of the United States is
trying to mine in order to pass another tax increase which will
wreck the American economy (and by ripple effect, the rest of
the world) and make the U.S. deficit situation worse.  But it's
people with money who apologize for their wealth, or people who
sell things who apologize for what they charge that damage their
own standing.  If you make your money honestly, the answer is to
say that; anyone who doesn't like it can go to hell.  They don't
have to buy your product or service and they don't have to use it
if they don't like it.
 
ET> Unfortunately,  management sometimes  takes statements like
  > "SENDFILE is a  totally useless anachronism, FTP  is all you
  > will  ever need and  the proof that SENDFILE  is useless is
  > that the Internet would  already have  it otherwise"
 
Any new service has to start someplace.  I can claim that the
multi-billion-dollar Internet is garbage for doing file
transfers because it doesn't have ZMODEM on the high-speed
lines and yet I have it on my $45 terminal program, Telemate.  :)
 
There is a story - possibly myth - that one of the Commissioners
of the U.S. Patent Office recommended that it be closed because
everything that could be invented already had been.  This was
back in 1850.
 
Everything on Internet came about because someone had a need
for something that they could use.  FTP is fine if you have a
full high-bandwidth connection.  In fact, it's only been for a
short period of time that there has been FTP by Mail service
available; until that came about, there was nothing available
for someone at a system without direct internet connections,
like MCIMAIL, for example.  :)
 
And of the services out there, (Paul Vixie's FTPMAIL from
DEC Western Research Lab being the only one available to
non-Bitnet sites), none of them provide any means to *put*
files on a server; the only option available is to UUENCODE
them and mail them (or BASE64 encode them if your mailer
has MIME capability) to someone on the site.
 
 
ET> The  next step will  be to port  it to  Windows NT, which
  > is very close to VMS and will further decrease the price
  > tag of the "entry level"  LISTSERV configuration.
 
I would expect it to be close to VMS!  VMS was designed and
created by the man who wrote *over one weekend* the RSX-11/M
operating system:  David Cutler.
 
Do you know who Microsoft Corporation hired away from DEC to
design and create Windows/NT?  The *very same* David N. Cutler
who was the designer of VMS.
 
 
---
Paul Robinson - [log in to unmask]
-----
The following Automatic Fortune Cookie was selected only for this message:
 
I don't care how poor and inefficient a country is; they like to run their
own business. I know men that would make my wife a better husband than I am;
but, darn it, I'm not going to give her to 'em.
                                        -- Will Rogers