Last night as I recovered from my first 50 mile bike-a-thon, I had time to think about this matter. Before continuing, I must first say that I am the Senior Academic Mainframe Consultant here and Temple's Listserv Postmaster. I should also say that my opinions are soley my own, not my employer's. Temple recently began to take heavy advantage of many Internet services such as readnews, gopher, and hytelnet. These services are available to our faculty, staff and students. I am a major Bitnet and listserv supporter here and have been for several years. I have three concerns in that regard. Many systems here can now utilize Internet services. What does Bitnet give us that Internet doesn't? If Temple drops Bitnet, it seems as if we must also shut down our listserver. Our Listserv hosts several popular lists one of which is Help-net which I run. Some of you probably subscribe Help-Net and know that it is an excellent way to learn about Internet and Bitnet services. If Temple's Listserv had to be shut down, our listserv lists could simply be moved to Usenet. How would that benefit Bitnet only sites who cannot access Usenet directly? It seems to me that it would be better to allow those who drop Bitnet to continue to run their listservers so they can continue to provide Bitnet only sites with information. Denying Bitnet sites this information could entise some of them to switch to Internet in order to receive the same information. I mean no diesrespect to Eric or anyone else, but this policy doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Why is it necessary to run listservers only on Bitnet connected systems? Up until recently, I did not know much about readnews. I am using it now on Temple's new central site Unix system and I am very impressed with it. In fact, I just asked our systems contractor to install Penn State's readnews interface on our VM system. Once this is done, many VM users here will probably become frequent readnews users. As such, it is reasonable to ask if it will to our advantage continue to run a listserver. As I said earlier, it would be nice to continue to serve information to Bitnet only sites, but what would be in it for Temple? As far as I know, Temple is not planning to drop Bitnet. My intuition, however, tells me that my director will ask about this. When she does ask me, it is possible that I may not be able to justify our staying on Bitnet. In fact, I was recently hired back from another university with a key condition being that I can become more involved with supporting Bitnet and its services here. As such, I have an interest in keeping Bitnet. If, however, I can no longer justify keeping Bitnet in my own mind, I will have to let my director know. I must do what is in Temple's best interest even if it is distasteful to me. So what are people thinking in this regard? Thanks for your time. Stan Horwitz Internet: STAN @ VM.TEMPLE.EDU Bitnet: STAN @ TEMPLEVM Temple University's Sr. Mainframe Consultant; Manager of the Help-Net and Suggest lists; Listserv Postmaster Standard disclaimers apply. One of these days I will make this sig file look much nicer.