Thank you for your clarification, Niall. I had indeed misunderstood what you were trying to say, and I apologize for having overreacted. Which doesn't mean that I agree with you. First, in order to avoid any possible misunderstanding, let me say that I plan to use the (private, non-EARN-owned) LEPICS CPU to work on LISTSERV, and not the CEARN 4341 which is owned by EARN (well it's more complicated than that, but never mind). So the "EARN infrastructure" we're speaking about is just the links. Niall's argument is that, since I'd be using EARN links to distribute the software, it ought to be available to EARN free of charge. If this rationale were to be upholded, all software that is distributed on the network ought to be made available to EARN free of charge. For example, if a scientist here communicates with other scientists in the States, using EARN lines in the process, to discuss the development of a new piece of thermocinetics software, writes this software, and uses EARN again to distribute this software to US sites, he ought to make it available to EARN free of charge should they be interested to run it. Well, I'm sorry but I don't endorse this rationale. In any case, my position on this subject is very clear: because of the way things have been going recently, I am no longer willing to provide LISTSERV service to EARN, regardless of whether they pay me for this or not (note: this is a long-term decision, I am speaking about the days "after the contract gets signed"); this may not apply to the individual SITES which are running LISTSERV today and which have talked me (quite massively I must say) into adding clauses to plan #1 allowing them to keep getting LISTSERV support from me, possibly at a cost. This has not been included to provide a source of money for me, and I'd be happy to remove it any time if there is a significant amount of people who think it's unethical; all EARN LISTSERV sites would then have to get the EARN-supplied maintenance. If EARN has legal means to prevent me from making my (new-)LISTSERV work available to BITNET free of charge while not allowing them to get it, fine, there will be no Eric Thomas work on LISTSERV at all, and BITNET will have to either negociate an agreement with EARN to get support from them (Welcome to the World of EARN Politics!), make up their own volunteer support team, or whatever. If the majority of people think it's unethical, same thing. BoD members are, of course, excluded from the list of people whose opinion on this subject will be taken into account, as I suspect their ethics to be somewhat oriented on the I/O activity that would take place on their purse as a result of either option. Eric