On 3 Sep 1993 15:05:24 GMT Tansin A. Darcos & Company said:
>Eric Thomas <[log in to unmask]>, writes:
>You might want to ask some people how long it takes to debug a sendmail.cf
>script and yet allow mail service.  Listserv and (the companion program
>that handles mail, is it L-Mail?) have been in use at hundreds of sites
>by hundreds of thousands of recipients of bitnet lists.  The requests
>I've heard have been for upgrades, I don't remember hearing about errors
>in the code; a reliability issue can be raised.   After all, it was the
>beloved sendmail that had the debugging feature that allowed Robert T.
>Morris Jr. to almost shut down the Internet.
 
In all fairness, methinks the following is relevant.
LISTSERV does have the advantage of operating in a network which
does NOT consist of radically different software at the network
level (the VMS, Unix, etc. machines use an emulation of IBM's NJE).
And I think that NJE is much "stricter" in its operation than the
software used in the Internet, thus less chance of problems at the
levels where Internet sites seem to have most of their problems.
Imagine for a moment how long it would have taken the Internet to
have grown as large as it is, had the network protocols there been
as "strict" as in BITnet...
Worse, imagine how BITnet would have been had NJE been more lax than
it is.  (*I* can imagine less unpleasant nightmares...).
 
But it looks like porting the whole LISTSERV concept to the Internet
may be a real chore due to this difference in "strictness".
(Heck, I can't even begin to count the RFC-822/etc. and SMTP headers
devoted to taking care of errors of some kind!)
 
Eric, half-cynically, half-humorously, half-seriously (yes, this
adds up to 1.5...) would it be a good idea to just forget about
RFC-822/etc., SMTP & such and just concentrate on X.400?   >;-)
 
 
>> While there will always be people arguing to their management that
>> LISTSERV should not be used because it is written in PASCAL, we are
>> confident that proven quality will prevail over religious
>> arguments.
 
Any idea how much I wish the various MLM authors could get together
and implement an MLM so good that nobody would even for political
reasons could make ANY argument for use of any other MLM?
Methinks that anyone with the brains given even a monkey should by
now have realized that there can NEVER be a question of *any* MLM
replacing Netnews, or vice-versa; they serve such different needs
that the overlap is totally ignorable, and both can and SHOULD be
available concurrently.
Also, IMHO Revised LISTSERV does have a headstart on any other MLM
re stability (even if only in the BITnet world).  This headstart can
be used to advantage in its porting to the Internet world.
 
 
>They did this before with competing TCP/IP products.  You could use the
>same term, call it the "listserv vs. sendmail bake off."
 
Would *love* to see this.  >;-)
 
 
Regards.
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