Further discussion on this topic should  take place on LSTSRV-L only, to avoid
cross-posting.
 
I am afraid that Jose-Maria's points 2  and 3 are quite valid, ie the LISTSERV
backbone  is  ONE  international  entity,   *not*  the  concatenation  of  TWO
independent entities, one  being EARN and the other non-EARN.  That is, if one
of  the  backbone servers  misbehaves,  for  whatever  reason, both  EARN  and
non-EARN sites are affected; whether that "broken" server is on EARN or not is
irrelevant, it needs to  be repaired or removed from the  backbone in order to
solve  the  problem. The  decision  therefore  CANNOT  be  taken ONLY  by  the
political entity  to which  the server  belongs, and I'm  afraid that  this is
something  the   politicians  cannot  accept  because,   unfortunately,  their
technical understanding of LISTSERV and their  knowledge of the history of the
product is  not sufficient to  give them a clear  picture of how  these things
work and how they are organized.
 
The net  result of this is  that, unfortunately, plan #2  as it is now  is not
viable. The  first thing that EARN  would do when they  become responsible for
the maintenance of the  EARN part of PEERS NAMES would be  to put FRMOP11 back
on the backbone, and the first  thing that a non-negligible number of non-EARN
sites would  do is  to complain  that this is  unacceptable. Clearly  a final,
binary  decision would  have to  be made,  and plan  #2 does  not define  how.
Without an extra clause  to clarify this point, plan #2  is therefore bound to
fail. Does  anybody have  anything to propose?  The only  technically feasible
plan I  can think of is  to have one unique  person on the network  making all
these decisions,  which has worked  very well in the  past but which  seems to
upset EARN considerably.
 
  Eric