On Mon, 15 Nov 1993 19:00:20 CET Gerhard Gonter
<[log in to unmask]> said:
 
>The point  is if LISTSERV will  run on some  sort of Unix box,  Rice and
>many others are simply going to dump their mainframe...
 
Sorry, but this is not what the message said. The decision to dump or not
dump an  IBM mainframe is usually  based on the availability  of suitable
replacements  for the  vital  administrative  software (payroll,  student
registration, etc)  that runs on this  machine. If no replacement  can be
found, the machine  stays no matter what. If the  administrative work can
be moved to a cheaper system, it is very difficult to justify keeping the
mainframe just  for LISTSERV. LISTSERV  is of  course one of  the reasons
people put  forward to keep  their mainframe, but  it's not like  all the
mainframes in the  network have been bought to run  LISTSERV, and will be
dumped the  instant unix list  managers become available (they  have been
available for  years). While there are  cases like that, they  are mostly
smaller, old  systems (4341,  4381, etc)  which have  been bought  by the
university a  long time  ago and  don't cost  anything besides  power and
floor space.
 
What the message said  is that it would be too  expensive to run LISTSERV
if the number of BITNET core sites  decreases, or if BITNET goes away, it
was not clear. There is no noticeable increase if the number of core site
decreases, except  of course on  the remaining  core sites, but  that has
nothing to  do with LISTSERV. If  BITNET goes away and  people migrate to
LISTSERV-TCP/IP, there  will be  an additional resource  cost as  SMTP is
less efficient  than NJE and  the data needs to  be encoded. But  this is
nothing like  an order of  magnitude. Encoding and decoding  messages may
add some 20-30% to LISTSERV's resource usage.
 
>Is L-Soft also going to implement a (true) Unix listserv sometime in the
>future?
 
Yes, this was announced in August. See GM9308-1.PS from [log in to unmask]
 
  Eric