I would like to take opportunity on  the EARN88 meeting to organize one or two
BOFs (assuming I am  able to attend EARN88, which is yet  to be confirmed), on
one of the following topics:
 
- BOF-UDS:  User  Directory Services.  We  would  discuss  what kind  of  user
  directory services are required on EARN, analyze the reasons why the NETSERV
  UDS registration had little success, discuss the possible implementations of
  a new  UDS system, etc.  Please don't start  a religious argument  about OSI
  directories. I  don't think users  are interested  in software that  will be
  available in  5 years, and in  the meanwhile I  get about one request  a day
  asking me about one Prof. Johnson from Zorglub University. The participation
  of a  few end-users (who  already have some  EARN experience) would  be very
  helpful.
 
- BOF-MAIL: Requirements for a new RFC822/RFC821 gateway-oriented mailer (ie a
  replacement   for   the   Crosswell   mailer).  I   insist   on   the   term
  "gateway-oriented": this mailer  would have to be designed in  such a way as
  to  make it  easy to  write gateways  to other  networks. When  I wrote  the
  EARN-JANET gateway, I wasted 50% of my time finding no-mods ways around bugs
  in the  code, and  another 10%  finding out  the best  places to  insert the
  gateway code.  RFC822 will be  alive for at least  another 5 years,  and the
  present mailer doesn't make it very easy to write gateways.
 
- BOF-LIST: Discussions about the future of LISTSERV. What are the (important)
  new functions that need to be added?  How can it be made more user-friendly?
  That  would be  a  kind of  "brainstorming"  session in  fact.  It would  be
  important that end-users participate in this.
 
- BOF-MGT: Nodes management  discussion. Anything you'd like  to discuss about
  nodes management.  I don't think  this would be  going to lead  us anywhere,
  since the BITNET  board seems to be unable to  identify an entity authorized
  to make decisions on their behalf, but if someone is interested, why not.
 
I don't propose any BOF on NETSERV since it had been decided to freeze it.
 
We probably won't  have time for the  4 BOFs, although I suspect  that most of
you won't attend  all the conferences (after  all, we already know  how to use
EARN don't  we? :-) ) and  that you'll have some  free time in the  evening. I
have  created four  dummy lists  on  FRECP11 to  collect the  names of  people
interested in  the various  BOFs. Please  subscribe to them  if you'd  like to
attend  the corresponding  BOF; if  you  know of  other persons  who would  be
interested, feel free to forward this note to them.
 
For example, if you're interested in the UDS and MAILER BOFs, you should do:
 
     TELL LISTSERV AT FRECP11 SUB BOF-UDS
 
     TELL LISTSERV AT FRECP11 SUB BOF-MAIL
 
Note: these are dummy lists created for  this survey only; you can't send mail
to them, and I'll destroy them after EARN88.
 
  Eric