On Sun, 5 May 1991 00:30:00 PDT Leonard D Woren <LDW@USCMVSA> said:
>Irrelevant. There is no reason to cater to PROFS because the network
>standard is RFC 822 format mail.
It is? Where is that written? Sorry, but until a statement is issued by
the appropriate network authorities, which will probably never happen
(er, I meant "not before OSI" of course :-) ), PROFS is as much of a
network standard as RFC822. And there's a BUNCH of PROFS users, and they
include MANY people with high management positions. Sure, we all know
that RFC822 is the de-facto standard, but most PROFS users don't and they
are as justified as RFC822 users in claiming support from wide-spread
network services such as LISTSERV. Look, I'm not making a theoretical
case. I could implement a 'SET listname PROFS' option, or 'REGISTER
firstname lastname (PROFS', or whatever, and cause LISTSERV to then send
mail to the user in question in PROFS format. It can't take more than a
day of work, counting the time I'd need to decipher the PROFS format (but
assuming someone would lend me a PROFS account somewhere for testing).
Think about all the time that all these thousands of people would save -
for just ONE DAY of my time? Zero impact on existing users! Am I not
being outrageously harsh in saying "Sorry, I'm not going to"??? What is
it that makes this justified in your opinion when not making the X-To:
change is a proof of ridiculous stubbornness?
>Well, if you get a mail loop between LISTSERV and an Acces/MVS
>recipient, that impacts lots of people, not just the ones on the list or
>at the Acces/MVS site.
But you don't get a mail loop, because the message sent back to the list
is discarded (since it was seen recently) and there is no "X-To:" in the
nastygram LISTSERV sends back. True, there are servers in the network who
don't run that code, but then these servers wouldn't run the new code
with the X-To: change either.
>(...) And then it took them over a year to admit that they didn't have
>any source at all to the SMTP modules. So how could I possibly have
>asked them to change X-TO/X-FROM to BSMTP, which is clearly better?
All this discussion is irrelevant. So what, you are not impressed at the
performance of ACC's vendor, and it was not easy to get away from them.
The same can be said by most PROFS shops. They sure are trying to make
IBM include native RFC822 support in PROFS. They sure are not impressed
with the robustness of the code. And they can't get away from it just
like that. They suffer as much as ACCESS users from the rest of the world
not running the same code. That doesn't mean I'll accept responsibility
for the respective problems of these communities.
>the cost of changing to something other than "X-To:" is tiny, and the
>impact is *ZERO*, I don't understand your resistance.
Perhaps some users have an extension to their mail-reader's REPLY command
to include things in the "X-To:" field. And when it stops working I'll
tell them: "it's because of ACCESS/MVS, you see they can't handle the
X-To: field and since they don't even have the source to some of their
stuff, they will never be able to fix it".
>But then again I have never seen anyone convince you to change your mind
>about anything. I don't even know why I bother trying. I will often take
>a stand on principle, which is what I suppose you're doing with this.
>But there are known cases of people convincing me that I'm wrong. Of
>course everyone knows that you're always right, and that we should all
>be groveling at your feet because otherwise you'll threaten to drop
>support or start charging for this perfect piece of software.
You sound bitter - perhaps at the fact that YOU never managed to convince
me of anything, whereas other people have? I don't understand why you are
so angry at my refusal to change the 'X-To:' field. I see nothing
preventing you from writing a note to all the LISTSERV maintainers,
explaining that this is a problem and that the stubborn <insert adjective
of your choice here> who wrote the software won't change the code because
he is a <insert noun>, so can you please edit all your lists and change
this field or make a source change or whatever. It's not like the code is
OCO and you have to sign a 30-pages we-won't-ever-make-any-mod agreement
with copies kept by 5 different custodians to get the software. You don't
depend on me to make the world change to what you suggest. You're asking
me to endorse your suggestion, and I won't do that, but I don't see how
that prevents other people from being convinced that you are right.
Your last sentence and earlier comments give me the impression that you
don't like LISTSERV, and feel like it's being imposed to you. You don't
have to use it, I'm sure you must have at least one Un*x workstation on
your campus where you can set up mailing lists the "Internet way". You
can subscribe it to LISTSERV lists you want to read, or use the NETNEWS
gateway, there are many possibilities. You can improve the server you
mentioned to support mailing lists. You can join the Internet working
group on LISTSERV where you'd have the opportunity to design and/or
implement your own view of mailing list management servers. You could do
a lot of productive things in this respect, but as it stands you sound
like you expect LISTSERV to be customized to the personal opinion of
Leonard Woren, at no cost to you in either personal time or money.
Eric
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