Thomas,  I have  been given  an implicit  choice between  accepting their
rules and giving them  what they want, in one way  or another, or bearing
with  the  continuous  pressure  of  politics  (just  shuffle  the  words
"liability",    "guaranteed",   "concern"    "ownership",   "controlled",
"unacceptable",   "blackmail",   "whimsical",   "regulated",   "student",
"management", "unpredictable",  "jeopardize" et al, and  count the number
of sentences that you can build out of them). Unfortunately, I have grown
old since I joined the network, and  I no longer have the energy to fight
these people all  day long. Unfortunately for the network,  I have chosen
to preserve my sanity at the expense of  what I feel was the right way to
do things and that most of you also felt to be the right way.
 
Granted, with plan #2 EARN  will, practically speaking, lose its LISTSERV
support. Granted, plan #1 would only  make happy the managerial types who
enjoy building  sentences all  day long  using the  words I  listed above
(guess how  many EARN  postmasters would  prefer LISTEARN  over LISTSERV?
They are less than 50%. Less than 33.3% in fact. Actually, it's even less
than 25%. Let's  be straight, between you  and me, it's less  than 20%. I
won't say  more before the survey  is closed). But the  current plan will
bring me straight to the asylum (well  I've always had one foot in anyway
;-) ) if it continues on forever.
 
  Eric