>Obviously there has to be some standard (RFC4000-RFC4999) which is supported RFC4000? You probably mean X.4000? Available in 4 years, to be implemented in 8 years :-) >EARN and BITNET/NetNorth agree on the use of special RFC822 tags and >everything works But I thought RFC822 was an anachronism and was not part of OSI? I know I may have sounded negative, my purpose was only to stress the fact that, when EARN does eventually migrate to OSI, there will be a loss in connectivity anyway. All 'data' will be exchanged through some type of 'gateway' to BITNET. Even if EARN keeps using the same LISTSERV software as BITNET, they will not be able to communicate as they do now, by exchanging files via a direct NJE transmission to the known, flat-address-space NJE address. >With the proposed plan a (partial) functional split of the networks seems >unavoidable - a situation I dislike. Me too. Let's have a bit of philosophy: when I joined the network, 3 and a half years ago, there was no EARN, no BITNET, no NetNorth. There was a "network". It was made up of 3 political entities, but nobody cared (I mean the users). Everybody was helping everyone else, and it didn't made any difference whether your terminal was a BITNET or an EARN one. Actually, LISTSERV penetrated BITNET faster than EARN. Today, we have three networks (or at least two: EARN and the rest of the world). And within EARN, we have also several networks (at least two: DFN and the rest of EARN). This distinction has been enforced by the politicians, who have always insisted on the independence of the various networks. EARN would like to "own LISTSERV", which would be only right since it was "developed in EARN" (if not by EARN). The fact that only 23% of the LISTSERVs sit on EARN CPUs is irrelevant. A functional split between EARN and BITNET is indeed something I dislike, but the politicians do desire it and it will eventually happen anyway. >I also don't know if BITNET/NetNorth want to make themselves headaches over >something which is not a real problem. I.e. I don't know if EARN made an >official request to talk about the efficiency, functionality and usefulness >of LISTSERV (or an equivalent tool). What do you mean? Why do you say it's not a real problem? In any case I doubt EARN made such a request. Actually EARN and BITNET don't talk (formally) to each other very often, except to ask each other for money (eg sharing the costs of maintenance of some utilities). Eric