An open letter to the CREN Board of Trustees: What is the status of the CREN negotiations with L-Soft. As you know, EARN made an agreement with L-Soft immediately after the company was formed and this is already paying off for EARN members. But BITNET/CREN is seen as dragging their feet. Obviously that perception may be unfair but it is rampant. After making a rather "flipant" comment on one list about this I was surprised at the reaction from other BITNET members. Many of us have invested a lot of money to make BITNET work and to provide excellent list and file services using the Revised LISTSERV product. We want to take advantage of the new features of the 1.8a code. I have no problem justifying this to my management but would prefer (or would have preferred) that CREN made a timely decision (I know - that is probably too much to ask given the dismal track record). For many of us if CREN doesn't come up with any provision to support LISTSERV/LMAIL then we probably look at our CREN membership as a trade-off between having good current software and supporting CREN. Actually, BITNET has been successful primarily because of member contributions and NOT CREN initiatives. One of those BIG contributions is the network of LISTSERV servers. CREN should really be working with and for its members to build on current successes as well as prepare for the future. I sure hope that is still the case and that I just missed some announcement or something. Thank you for your time. ----------- Marty Hoag [log in to unmask] US Mail: NDSU ITS ND Higher Education Computer Network IACC Room 206 Phone: (701)-237-8639 Fax: (701)-237-8541 PO Box 5164 Bitnet: nu021172@NDSUVM1 (note 0=zero) Fargo, ND 58105 NDSUVM1 BITNET Techrep