Here is another  piece of immediately discardable mail for  the information of
whomever might be interested, and which I would have sent to DEAR-EXEC instead
if such a list existed.
 
I  have read  in EXEC24  89 that  the estimated  amount of  time required  for
"LISTSERV maintenance, development  and documentation" is 1.5  week per month.
First  I would  like to  suppress an  irrelevant comment  about the  Man-Month
Syndrom. Now that this unproductive comment is suppressed, I would like to say
that "LISTSERV documentation" alone warrants a full-time position for at least
3 to 6 months, depending on the litterary skills of the person in question and
on his command of the english  language, whereas just answering user questions
and processing bug  reports is about 25%  of the time of the  type of (2-years
experience, ie  type-2 of the LISTSERV  surveys) staff described later  in the
paper, or 1.0 week/month. Fixing the  bugs and modifying the software to adapt
to important  changes in  the network  (new gateway software,  etc) is  a very
variable  amount of  work, and  I  will therefore  give no  estimate on  this,
especially as it  strongly depends on the knowledge of  the person in question
(I have serious doubts as to whether  a type-2 staff can maintain the LISTSERV
assembler code at  all). Finally, development is, by definition,  an amount of
time which entirely  depends on what Management wants to  see implemented, and
that it is therefore entirely up to EARN to estimate.
 
Finally, I  find it interesting  to see that  EARN has eventually  reverted to
their  original "we  will  hire  two full-time  persons"  position, which  the
Technical  Group  had  so  strongly  argued  against.  I  recommend  that  all
interested parties should  order file EARN24 89 from  LISTSERV@UKACRL and read
it. Now I understand  much better why EARN is so eager  to have me maintaining
LISTSERV on  a continued basis  until they find someone  to do the  work (this
does not, however, change my position on the subject).
 
People who  really think  it might  be productive to  discuss this  in further
details should do so on LSTSRV-L only, to avoid cross-posting.
 
  Eric