On Sun, 16  Jul 1995 18:21:54 -0400  Roger Burns <[log in to unmask]>
said:
 
>A problem had  been mentioned a couple  of months ago about  how the new
>1.8b spam  control may also  lock out  entire Usenet news  gateways. Has
>there been  any progress in modifying  the spam control to  prevent this
>from happening?
 
The spam control will not be  modified to prevent this problem because it
is specific to  this particular gateway, which is running  on a VM system
that is  being phased out. LISTSERV@AUVM  has already been migrated  to a
unix machine and they have also left BITNET. The replacement gateway will
probably run on a unix system and thus will not run the same software. In
other words, by the time the new version is out and people have installed
it, the problem will be gone. You see, July is when US universities place
half  of  their orders  and  want  their  yearly maintenance  to  expire.
Universities generally want  to issue a new PO explicitly  every year and
don't want to  commit to more than a  year at a time, so  90% of academic
sites  are  without  maintenance  between  June  30  and  whenever  their
purchasing department issues the new PO.  We send them notices 5 weeks in
advance but most of them, being  state owned or state funded, are legally
not allowed  to cut POs (or  even promise to  cut one) on the  new fiscal
year's budget  before July  1. So,  there is no  mechanism to  avoid this
hiatus, and due to  the volume of orders it can take over  a month to get
the PO. On top of that, the transition from CREN to L-Soft maintenance is
confusing some  of the purchase  officers and  we keep having  to clarify
things  and  demonstrate  that  CREN  isn't a  second  source  of  L-Soft
maintenance any more  that local regulations would force  them to include
in a competitive bid.  And in 11 days, the EARN  contract will expire and
Terena hasn't  yet announced the  new agreement, which will  require each
university to pay individually. The bottom  line is that it will probably
be September before most of the backbone is again under maintenance.
 
  Eric