Yesterday afternoon, I have received a note from Frode Greisen, the President
of EARN, explaining the position of the EARN Executive regarding LISTSERV.
This note was simply disquieting, and I have spent most of the night trying to
find a way to solve the situation without affecting the users. No matter how
long or in what way I looked at the problem, I unavoidably ended up with one
of the equations transforming itself in 1=0. This morning, after sleeping
three hours, I have decided that the problem should be solved today. Not
tomorrow. Today. And that I should preserve my sanity first, since the users
will be affected in any case.
Frode's letter came in a sad and tense context. Frode had contacted my boss a
few days ago and told him about the LISTSERV business. You can imagine how
much I appreciated this, after the Jose-Maria story. Anyway, Frode's note
expressed the concern of the EARN Executive about the recent development of
the LISTSERV story. The Executive finds unacceptable that a discrimination is
made between countries, and that an equal degree of service is not provided to
all of them, etc. They reminded me that the development of LISTSERV involved
the usage of EARN lines, and of CPU time on a machine that I do not own, and
that therefore it might well be that I am not legally able to make decisions
about the product; Frode sent a copy of this note to the person at CERN who is
responsible for following legal affairs. Although I am absolutely convinced
that I would win such a case (even the employers of Jose-Maria, who planned to
sue him in order to recover the property of the software he developed at GMD
in his spare time, quickly changed their mind after talking to a lawyer, while
Jose-Maria's trade-union assured him he had nothing to fear), and I could then
legally extract a lot of money from EARN which they would have deserved to
lose, I decided overnight not to follow this path. I am tired, very tired, and
I want this business to end as soon as possible. A court decision takes
months, if not years. I want to solve the problem today, even if that means I
am being exploited once more.
Finally, Frode reminded me that political discussions are not allowed on EARN.
In particular, the surveys are objects of highly political and commercial
contents. There will therefore be no new survey, and I have changed all the
files in SURVEY FILELIST to GET=N/A, so that nobody can retrieve them. For
this same reason, there will be no more political discussion about LISTSERV;
all future discussions shall be on the basis of technical implementation of
the decisions I have made this morning, with no political discussion. I have
my own opinion about the Executive's eagerness to prevent political
discussions on the network, but I will not formulate it here.
To summarize, the EARN Executive does not like any of the plans (1,2,3), and
does not appear to have another plan to propose. In addition, since surveys
have a political aspect, there can be no new survey, and in any case there is
no time for any survey, I want the problem to be ended now. I have therefore
made the decision myself, and I apologize in advance to the EARN users. I have
earnestly try to achieve a workable agreement, I have failed, I now have to
save myself if I cannot save LISTSERV.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Final decision about LISTSERV and EARN <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
1) This decision is final and irrevocable. Future discussions shall be on
purely technical grounds, and on the basis on the acceptation of the decisions
listed herein.
2) I am going to write a letter granting full and indefinite access to
LISTSERV, release 1.5o (FIX15O1), to all EARN nodes, at NO COST to EARN; I
will sign this letter and mail it to Frode, as soon as I receive his snailmail
address.
3) I will not participate in the distribution of LISTSERV to EARN sites, even
on a temporary basis. I merely allow EARN to perform that distribution, and it
is their responsibility to decide how they wish to organize themselves.
4) LISTSERV support to EARN will be withdrawn as soon as EARN has found an
alternative source of maintenance, and, as indicated in an earlier note, no
later than June the 1st of 1989 in any case.
5) On the day this support is withdrawn, or shortly thereafter, I will ship
release 1.6 of LISTSERV to all non-EARN sites. One month afterwards, I will
remove all EARN servers from the backbone, since they will have become
obsolete and they will no longer be supported. This delay of one month should
allow EARN to organize their own backbone.
6) Upon request from the EARN Executive Committee, I would completely remove
EARN nodes from PEERS NAMES rather than just changing their :backbone tag to
NO. EARN nodes will remain in PEERS NAMES until I receive such a request.
7) On the day that I withdraw LISTSERV maintenance from EARN, EARN shall
provide a stable electronic mail address to which I will forward all
LISTSERV-related questions and requests that I might receive. If EARN does not
provide this mailbox, such questions will be discarded unread.
8) I will make no other deal with EARN, will listen to no other proposal, will
study no other possibility or extensions to this list of decisions. If EARN
wants more from me, they will have to convince a court that they own a right
to my time and to the work I am going to do in the future. I will, in any
case, have to contract a lawyer for my protection.
Eric
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