CREN Board Members: Our site has been waiting patiently for the CREN/L-Soft negotiations to conclude with either an agreement or a statement that no agreement would be reached. If the CREN board states that no agreement would be reached, our site will begin negotiations with L-Soft directly in order to get the benefits of the latest releases of Listserv and LMail. Our evaluation is that these new releases provide significant new function which will allow us to operate our site more effectively. Enabling our site to operate more effectively is our express interest in supporting CREN with our annual dues. In the past few months I have noticed the western CREN region disintegrating with the loss of the Southern California core site and several significant University of California sites dropping membership. Other UC sites are also discussing the continuing value of CREN membership. (I am not speaking for them in this note.) At this point we plan to continue our CREN membership. There is little reason for us to do so, however, if this means paying both for CREN dues and L-Soft license fees. It would be helpful if board members would state what needs to be accomplished in order for negotiations to be concluded one way or the other together with a date for a final conclusion. Frankly, the appearance shown to the CREN members is that the board is not actively involved in this critical issue. Richard Hintz [log in to unmask] OPSRJH@UCCVMA (BITNET) University of California