Niall, it's a 1-line change to 1 exec to zap this thing, but if I do it I'll
be flamed by over  100 people. I'll just abide by the  old saying, Vox Populi,
Vox Dei. Let's put it on a vote.
 
  (Niall is referring to the mailing ACKs from LISTSERV not being reflected to
non-BITNET nodes).
 
  I don't see any  reason why INFO or GET should not  work on HEANET. LISTSERV
should generate a mail envelope to send the stuff. /Eric
 
/../
Eric,
 
It is perhaps technically true that the acknowledgements which Mary would like
to see are  "not very important per  se". However, it does  little to generate
confidence in  the fruit  of your  labours that  a number  of features  of the
server do not  work as documented for users on  gatewayed networks. Given this
behaviour,  why should  they believe  that  even the  basic mail  distribution
function works?
 
I believe  that it is important  for user confidence that  acknowledgements be
delivered to whomsoever requests them,  whatever the transport service used to
deliver the  mail. If  this cannot be  done, the reply  to the  user's command
should say so, and explain (briefly) why.
 
Could you please  consider the possibility of providing a  mechanism for local
people  to define  to LISTSERV  those  gateways which  are "known  to be  well
designed and work correctly" so that the server's filtering of addresses could
be based on a more flexible heuristic  than whether the address "looks like an
Internet address"?
 
By  the way,  requests for  INFO (except  INFO ?)  do not  work for  (HEANET-)
gatewayed users. Is this caused by the same restriction, or by something else?
 
Please understand that I am not in  a position to assess the work necessary to
implement any of these suggestions; perhaps  they are unreasonable. It seems a
pity, however,  that one  of the  better servers in  netland has  its services
curtailed because of some of the poorer gateways.
 
Niall