>>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