At 08:28 AM 2/3/99 +10, Debra Wilson wrote: >or what if a software company should suddenly decide that they dont like or >understand why one of their users is requesting certain information or >services from them, banning the person or company would be kind of self >defeating.... But this is essentially what many companies (hw & sw) do when they put you on hold for hours when you try to get tech support. Or when they ship betaware as gold and expect you to pay for upgrades when they finally get around to fixing the bugs that you have reported to them. Or when they decide to ignore RFCs and other standards when they design their email software and servers (like Microsoft, AT&T, AOL and others) and expect you to work around them. So as list owners and site administrators we have to decide: (1) if we want to emulate the worst practices of Microsoft and other companies (a list of companies that I hereby explicitly exclude LSoft from) by seeking to exclude people who should be members of our constituencies because we demand that they buy in to the latest possible everything and in the exact way that we demand no matter how it negatively impacts on their ability to communicate with us OR (2) if we want to embrace the open communications that represent the best of what the Internet can be. If the choice is inclusionary or exclusionary, I will pick inclusionary every time. Karen Strauss Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy Network [log in to unmask]