On Wed, 10 Dec 1997 23:51:44 -0500 Don Wiss <[log in to unmask]> said:

>There are now 10 million AOL subscribers and many MSN subscribers. It is
>very hard for us to understand why L-Soft hasn't written a patch ASAP to
>deal  with these  non  conforming  errors, since  it  is  such a  common
>problem.

L-Soft releases a new  version of LISTSERV about once a  year, so this is
the time frame in which one can introduce a change to the installed base.
AOL on the other hand can change their bounce system overnight. When this
issue  came up  a couple  years ago,  they said  they would  change their
bounce format so that it would work with LISTSERV. This change is tied to
the introduction  of their new,  un-slow mail  system which you  can rest
assured they want to move on with *very badly*. For reasons that I do not
know but  can imagine,  the introduction  of this  new mail  system keeps
getting delayed such  that the implementation date is  invariably "in the
next couple months", or so it seems. Meanwhile, probes work fine with AOL
and with  nearly all other non-conforming  mail systems (as long  as they
send the  bounce back  to LISTSERV and  not to the  poster). I  have also
noted a trickle of AOL bounces in a format understandable by LISTSERV, so
I imagine that they are making some live tests.

As  for MSN,  when implementing  heuristics for  a specific  non-standard
bounce format,  it is important to  have some kind of  assurance that the
format will not change tomorrow and break everything, and that the format
is consistent (that is, that there  aren't "weird cases" that you haven't
seen and which the kludge you are writing will interpret as failures when
they aren't). Otherwise you are just cutting some rope with which to hang
yourself later.  It is difficult  to obtain  this kind of  assurance from
online providers. A  much better approach is to work  with the people who
develop the  mail product they  are using and get  them to change  to the
standard bounce format, which benefits a lot more people than just MSN.

  Eric