Yesterday, someone gave me a suggestion after asking me not to mention his
name because it might get him/her into problems. He/she even asked me to put
the idea into someone else's mouth, the someone being one of the members of
that list, which I am not going to do. Anyway, that person seemed to be concer-
ned with the CUNY-WISCVM file queue and suggested that all the ARPA digests,
ie SFLOVERS &co, be distributed on BITNET via the network of FRECP11-LISTSERVs.
This sounds like a very good idea, and Harri is already doing it in Europe. We
would obviously need several host sites in the states for those lists. Please
note that there are A LOT of lists. Also note that some of those mailfiles are
SO screwed up that even the mailer cannot handle them properly; even when list-
serv just redistributes one of the fields 'as is', the mailer spits it out and
screams with pain. This requires a little intervention from the postmaster once
in a while (refer to Harri for more details :-) ). My *personal* opinion would
be to state that if CUNY wants to reduce its load on WISCVM, then CUNY should
donate an account to run the FRECP11-LISTSERV code, since we have at present
NO server in any of the central sites, except perhaps UIUCVMD to some extent.
(fyi, two out of the three major EARN sites installed a LISTSERV)
A summary of the BITNIC situation: I do not know exactly what is going on at
BITNIC, but to the best of my knowledge (and intuition :-) ) the situation is
as follows: the 'decision-makers' had decided not to install a FRECP11-LISTSERV
for the same reasons that they do not use GENROUTS, UPDNODES, NETSERV, etc.
However, considering the number of sites that did install a revised LISTSERV,
they felt like they had to give some attention to the problem, what with the
political aspects of it with regard to the incoming voting on membership fees
and suchlike. Anyway, they asked Scott Earley to have a look at the thing and
give his opinion on it. It sounds like if Scott says NO, then it's no, while
if Scott says YES, it might still be no but it might be yes too; in the latter
case, I guess that if they get into any problem with FRECP11-LISTSERV, Scott
will be the one to be blamed. I would not like to be in Scott's position at
present. Although I am not going to kneel before the BITNIC and lick their feet
until they install a FRECP11-LISTSERV, I suggested that they might give it a
try on ANOTHER id, with a SINGLE list at the beginning, and I think it's the
only way we can get them to install it. A few days ago I heard that Ricky was
asked to give his opinion on FRECP11-LISTSERV too, so what I'm saying might be
a little obsolete.
Eric
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