>Eric, I don't know the details of  the contract between you and Earn. Is
>there anything  preventing you  from distributing  the code  to European
>sites?
 
No, nothing  like that.  However if  I did  offer EARN  sites to  get the
current (1.6a, non-EARN,  whatever you want to call it)  code from me, on
an unsupported basis, it would make neither me nor EARN happy. First, the
contract says that the version I am  giving to EARN is 1.5o (plus all the
optional packages, as they existed on the  day I wrote the contract - may
the  10th of  1989). It  explicitly  says that  this does  not extend  to
anything I might write in the future. So if I make 1.6a available to some
EARN sites  and the  EARN Association  only has  1.5o, they  will *again*
start asking for a new contract giving them the right to distribute 1.6a,
and of course they will then want 1.6b, etc. I will in any case refuse to
sign any such  contract, as it basically  says "I am giving  version X of
LISTSERV to the  EARN Association so that they can  do whatever they want
about it, with  the restriction that they can only  distribute it to EARN
sites  and they  can't pretend  they wrote  it". I  have given  1.5o, and
that's the last  gift I will make  to them. Accepting, on a  case by case
basis, to give a copy of the software to a site for its own use, with the
clear  restriction that  they  cannot give  it out  to  anybody else,  is
something much weaker than such a contract.
 
Anyway I  really doubt the  BoD/Exec would  accept that EARN  (sorry, the
EARN Association) is officially given an obsolete version of the software
to provide support and maintenance for,  when in practice most EARN sites
get, officiously and  in a way that completely bypasses  the Exec, a more
recent version  which the EARN  Association is not allowed  to distribute
itself.
 
>We could even phone your boss if it helps :-)
 
No need for that. The *last* thing  I'm afraid of is being fired :-), and
anyway EARN can put little or no  pressure on my boss or the organization
I am working for. I just don't like to have to explain long political war
stories to  people who,  for very understandable  reasons, would  like to
understand what all this mess is about and what, if any, they could do to
help solving the problem and stopping the complaints.
 
  Eric