On Tue, 15 Sep 1992 15:37:29 GMT Richard Alan Schafer <[log in to unmask]> said: >The LISTSERV license agreement grants a free license to CREN, EARN, >etc., members, and mentions that a paid license would be required for >anyone else. I know Eric has asked sites who left BITNET to stop running >LISTSERV, since they're no longer CREN members. If such a site wanted to >continue running LISTSERV, what would be the charge for doing so? Could >that site still communicate with other LISTSERVs if the only >connectivity was non-NJE? I'll answer the second question first: LISTSERV is built for BITNET and designed around its strong points. Furthermore it is an integrated system - most of the functions rely on other functions to get their work done. The ability of backbone servers to know about the lists hosted by other servers relies on DISTRIBUTE, which relies on the topology information in BITEARN NODES and on the server information in PEERS NAMES. The latter relies on the file server functions for maintenance, and the file server functions rely on DISTRIBUTE for delivery. If you take away one of the components, you lose most of the functionality. With no access to BITNET, there is no BITEARN NODES, no PEERS NAMES, no topology information and hence no DISTRIBUTE. That's many components missing, and the result is that all network-wide functions are gone. LISTSERV can still run of course, but only in local mode - it will think it is the only server in the world, and DISTRIBUTE will be turned into a sophisticated pipe to the mailer. I do not call that very useful, and that is one of the reasons why the cost of a license for non-NJE sites is pretty low (to stay on the safe side I won't give any figure, but it's less than 1 year of BITNET membership for a OTC license). But the main reason is that I am doing that only as a favour to former BITNET node administrators whose management decided to pull the plug, or who moved to greener pastures. These are people who understand the limitations and know what needs to be done to make LISTSERV work outside BITNET (nothing extraordinarily difficult, but it's not trivial and there is zilch documentation in support of non-BITNET sites). Another important point is that I do not support non-BITNET sites, and they cannot get new versions or fixes automatically via NJE. This means I have to get the data to them myself, and the procedures for doing that are NOT convenient at all. The Internet being what it is, I have a choice between putting the software on an anonymous FTP directory (simply out of question), giving them a logon password for SEARN (unacceptable - in fact I don't even run an FTP server), demanding that they give me a password on their machine (usually unacceptable), or cutting the data into 50+ pieces small enough not to upset SMTP servers and other mail gateways and sending them as mail. But then as we all know the Internet doesn't need an unsolicited bulk data transfer protocol - it has been doing just fine without one for so many years, quite obviously it doesn't need one. Anyway, this works because there are very few such licenses and because the people in question are competent and do not cause me a great deal of work. The day either condition stops being true, the price will have to go up or I will stop selling. I am not interested in spending my time helping people to coerce software into working in degraded mode in an environment it was not designed to operate with! If furthermore this is used as an excuse by short-sighted executives to disconnect from BITNET to save a few thousands a year ("FTP can replace SENDFILE, TALK can replace TELL and LISTSERV will remain"), I will just quit licensing to non-BITNET sites. Eric