For both political and technical reasons, I have split the LSTSRV-L list
into two separate lists, one for LISTSERV release 1.6 (which will remain
called LSTSRV-L) and one for LISTEARN, for which I have chosen the
arbitrary name of LSTERN-L (see below). The status of the LSTSRV-L list
is now the following:
- As you can see, the list title has been changed to "Forum on LISTSERV
release 1.6".
- The EB0UB011, DEARN, CEARN, FRULM11 and FINHUTC lists have been
unpeered and replaced with dummy lists pointing to the new LSTSRV-L
peer for Europe, [log in to unmask] This will make list management easier
while avoiding the dreaded LISTSERV@CEARN bottleneck, ie postings will
cross the ocean much faster than they used to. The dummy lists in
question should be deleted within 1 week - their purpose is just to
allow mail currently queued somewhere in Europe and addressed to the
old peers to be delivered.
- SEARN has the full archives for the list, or, at least, what the
various HDA crashes at CEARN have spared: I am missing the LOG8809 to
LOG8811 files.
As I said there are both technical and political reasons for this split.
The technical reasons is that I'm tired of the confusion introduced by
having questions and bug reports regarding two different pieces of
software appear on the same list. I spend time looking up problems which
have been solved 9 months ago, and whenever somebody answers a question
from someone having problems with the "other" version of the software,
the answers are often inaccurate to some extent. For instance, the list
of valid SET options posted by Turgut applies to LISTEARN only, and the
list of keywords posted by Mark is for LISTSERV release 1.6. Note that
this is not a complaint against Turgut or anyone else, just a statement
that such confusion is unavoidable, and will only increase as the two
pieces of software slowly evolve in different ways. Even on such a highly
technical forum as VMSHARE, where most of the audience is systems
programmers, there are different conference files for the various
versions of systems or application software.
The political reason is that, as you may know, EARN decided to call the
LSTSRV-L list an "EARN Special Interest Group" (as defined in the EARN
document BOD31 89 - a group of people sharing the same interest, ran by a
chairman elected by the members, and responsible for keeping the Network
Operation Group, the relevant EARN Project Groups and the EARN Executive
Committee informed of the discussions which are taking place). I had
complained about that in a note to EARNTECH dated 19 june 1989,
suggesting that EARN should make their own list (abiding by the rules of
BOD31 89) for that purpose and stop calling a public forum comprised
mostly of BITNET people an "EARN Special Interest Group"; I got, of
course, no answer. Meanwhile more EARN papers were issued that mentioned
the "EARN LSTSRV-L Special Interest Group" and, finally, the glossies
that were made for the EARN'90 user conference in Killarney also list
LSTSRV-L as an "EARN Special Interest Group", even though there is now a
"LISTEARN Special Interest Group" in the list (which, as I learnt later,
corresponds to the LISTTECH list). This gives the reader the impression
that EARN "owns" LISTSERV, and I cannot tolerate that.
I have therefore decided to create a new "EARN Special Interest Group"
for LISTEARN (for which I will let EARN choose a name and chairman, and
to which I will not subscribe), and to remove EARN users from the
LSTSRV-L "EARN Special Interest Group", which is now closed to
subscriptions from EARN users. Maintainers of EARN servers running 1.6
have been left on the list, since this is where the information relevant
to the software they are using will appear. The list will be re-opened to
EARN subscribers 1-2 months after EARN'90, when all the people who
decided to subscribe after reading the glossies and hearing the
presentations found out that it is not really an EARN forum after all;
the archives have been left public so that people who need the
information can get it, with a little extra bit of effort.
This note is being sent to all the people who were subscribed to LSTSRV-L
before the split; as soon as it is out, I will delete EARN recipients
from the list. A new list, LSTERN-L@SEARN, has been created using all the
EARN recipients of LSTSRV-L from nodes not running release 1.6. I chose
this name and the SEARN machine because, after asking EARN to make a new
list for that 1 month ago, I haven't received any answer (apart from "we
will consider your proposal to split the lists"). This list is open for
anybody to subscribe or sign off, but since I do *not* want to host it on
this toy workstation (and I don't think it would be appropriate anyway),
I have not created the associated dummy userid. This means that you can't
mail to it, but you can freely subscribe or signoff; I will send the list
of recipients to EARN when they create the final list.
Eric
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