>>3) An EARN site running as backbone server must run LISTEARN.
>
>This is the right interpretation.
Yes Alain, but you have not defined what "backbone" means. I know three
and a half meanings of this word:
1. Sites participating to the OSI/X.25 project (or whatever you wish to
call it) used to be called "EARN backbone sites" in EARN BoD/Exec
documents.
2. A number of technical people, including Jose-Maria and myself, used to
call "EARN backbone sites" what is now officially called "EARN
international sites". This is how Olivier just said he understood the
directive.
3. "The LISTSERV backbone" refers to LISTSERV sites having :backbone.YES
in their PEERS NAMES entry; a large number of them are not
"international sites".
4. Later in your note you refer to the "LISTEARN backbone". Yes, it is
true that now, for political reasons, EARN sites have a different list
of backbone LISTSERV sites than BITNET sites, because ICNUCEVM cannot
do like IRLEARN and UKACRL and send me a note saying that they
apologize for not having updated their tables for 5 months and have
taken steps to ensure that, in the future, tables will be updated on a
regular basis. And I'm afraid that, as time goes, the number of
discrepancies between the 2 sets will go increasing.
>It might be (but this is just a personal guess) removing from the
>LISTEARN backbone.
Since I would not accept to remove an (otherwise smoothly operated)
LISTSERV site from the BITNET backbone just because it refused to sign a
contract according to a directive whose wording is at best ambiguous, we
would indeed be talking about an increase in the disorder of this
network.
> 2. Propose the listserver directive, to make sure that at least EARN
> listserver backbone sites run the same version of listserver, to
> avoid problems of incompatibility between backbone servers.
Ok Alain, you may say again that I keep complaining about everything EARN
does or says. But please take a few minutes to think about the two logic
errors in your statement:
- The directive is to SIGN the contract, not to USE the software. That
is, you CAN run 1.6 if you want, as long as you have signed the
LISTEARN contract. Obviously having a piece of paper in a drawer does
not solve compatibility problems.
- If compatibility problems between :backbone.YES servers exist, they
will strike you regardless of whether the "border" between LISTEARN and
1.6-land is inside or outside EARN. Indeed, probably the worst thing
you can do, from the diplomatic point of view, is to have the problem
strike at the EARN/BITNET border, ie have a setup that forces personnel
of BITNET sites to take action whenever there is a problem. It would
indeed be much more tactful to cause all the problems to occur entirely
within EARN, so that only EARN personnel is affected if there is a
problem; this is actually, and fortunately, the case now.
Eric
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