There are two problems with that approach. The first is that there might be a list exit enforcing some actual subscription control, even though the list reads "Subscription= Open". The second and most important is that 80% of US LISTSERV sites are still trying to figure out the CREN/L-Soft paperwork. Then in 3 days they may or may not realize they have missed the deadline, and start from scratch with our regular maintenance agreement. John on the other hand wants to release in July. You wouldn't believe the amount of confusion this 30-page CREN contract has caused. We get contracts with a starting date of July 1 and an ending date of June 30 (yes, both 94 ;-) ). Ok, that's rare, but we get many contracts with a starting date of July 1 when the CREN/L-Soft agreement requires you to have registered for the period ending on June 30, 1994 if you want to benefit from the contract. And we get a lot of contracts where the master CREN/L-Soft legalese was included and modified, and we are asked to initial the changes. So we explain that the contract in question was signed on March 12 and it is what it is. The parties are CREN and L-Soft, not L-Soft and U of XYZ. Just initialing the changes unilaterally won't change the contract. The lawyer then says he can't accept this or that clause and it must positively be nullified in writing or he won't sign. We say get a written waiver from CREN (these are usually clauses saying CREN has certain rights which the customer doesn't like). Two months later we get a new copy with a PO for $0.00, but otherwise just the same, please initial changes and return, and we get a State of XYZ Procurement Form to fill in as a bonus. Sometimes they send the contracts to CREN. Often we get a PO for $0.00 covering the period DEC94-JUN95. We can't take such POs because that's not the way the contract works. Anyway, we end up spending more time doing legal user support than we'd spend actually supporting the software, and in spite of that the success rate is only on the order of 2/3. Meanwhile the technical people get frustrated and the purchasing officers who have to track the $0.00 PO wonder what is going on. When we make a straight sale, on the other hand, the contracts are reviewed in at most 2-3 weeks. I guess that's because lawyers are particularly suspicious of something which is free but very complicated, whereas a standard licensing agreement is something they can handle in 15 minutes. At any rate there are 33 US sites out of 166 licensed for 1.8a and it will take a while for the others to realize they missed the deadline and should start from scratch with a different procedure. By the way, NERVM is one of the 133 ;-) Eric