>The net result of this is that, unfortunately, plan #2 as it is now is not
>viable. The first thing that EARN would do when they become responsible for
>the maintenance of the EARN part of PEERS NAMES would be to put FRMOP11 back
>on the backbone, and the first thing that a non-negligible number of non-EARN
>sites would do is to complain that this is unacceptable. Clearly a final,
>binary decision would have to be made, and plan #2 does not define how.
>Without an extra clause to clarify this point, plan #2 is therefore bound to
>fail. Does anybody have anything to propose? The only technically feasible
>plan I can think of is to have one unique person on the network making all
>these decisions, which has worked very well in the past but which seems to
>upset EARN considerably.
I'm afraid Eric is right. I can see two methods to restore the viability
of plan #2; however, it should be clear that we cannot extend it every
time we find a problem, and as I guess what we have now is a fundamental
lack of understanding maybe it wouldn't be worth to pursue the issue
further... Anyway, for reasons of completeness, here are the two
(alternative) approaches I can see. Comments welcome.
a) Eric continues to maintain the global tables for the whole network,
unpaid. I'd guess that Eric would presently not be especially inclined
to take this responsibility, especially after the last events;
however, this might be different it it was clearly WRITTEN and SIGNED
by EARN that they would accept Eric's decisions without comments. This
last point is very important: without comment, as formally agreed by a
contract.
The two objections that can be presented to this plan concern Eric and
EARN: Eric could argue that he does not want to provide any kind of
service to EARN -- the counter-argument would be that the maintenance
of the global tables is a global service which affects the whole
network, and that maintenance of the EARN part would be done only for
the benefit (and protection) of non EARN nodes; further, Eric will not
be paid for *that*, while EARN would have to sign a paper saying they
would not complain.
The second objection, you have guessed it, is that it is presently
very, very unlikely that EARN would never accept to sign such an
agreement, as they could imagine all kind of pressures and
blackmailing behind it. Nevertheless -- and I myself would believe
Eric acting bona fide and not doing any blackmailing, but that's EARN
who has to believe in that and nor me -- technically speaking I still
think this would be the better solution.
b) The maintenance of the global tables is taken by someone at BITNET.
This person should take advice from Eric and the LISTSERV
Coordinators, as from BITNET, NetNorth and EARN. This person should
listen to all these parties, but IN NO WAY be obliged by their
advices. This would protect BITNET and NetNorth from EARN, and
reversely.
Comments welcome. But please note that I'm not interested in a c)
approach like plan #3, i.e. "EARN will take the full responsibility for
the global tables and may or may not agree with BITNET and NetNorth
methods so that they are satisfied". For that we'd better go directly to
plan #3.
Jose Maria
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