On Wed, 10 Dec 1997 23:51:44 -0500 Don Wiss <[log in to unmask]> said: >There are now 10 million AOL subscribers and many MSN subscribers. It is >very hard for us to understand why L-Soft hasn't written a patch ASAP to >deal with these non conforming errors, since it is such a common >problem. L-Soft releases a new version of LISTSERV about once a year, so this is the time frame in which one can introduce a change to the installed base. AOL on the other hand can change their bounce system overnight. When this issue came up a couple years ago, they said they would change their bounce format so that it would work with LISTSERV. This change is tied to the introduction of their new, un-slow mail system which you can rest assured they want to move on with *very badly*. For reasons that I do not know but can imagine, the introduction of this new mail system keeps getting delayed such that the implementation date is invariably "in the next couple months", or so it seems. Meanwhile, probes work fine with AOL and with nearly all other non-conforming mail systems (as long as they send the bounce back to LISTSERV and not to the poster). I have also noted a trickle of AOL bounces in a format understandable by LISTSERV, so I imagine that they are making some live tests. As for MSN, when implementing heuristics for a specific non-standard bounce format, it is important to have some kind of assurance that the format will not change tomorrow and break everything, and that the format is consistent (that is, that there aren't "weird cases" that you haven't seen and which the kludge you are writing will interpret as failures when they aren't). Otherwise you are just cutting some rope with which to hang yourself later. It is difficult to obtain this kind of assurance from online providers. A much better approach is to work with the people who develop the mail product they are using and get them to change to the standard bounce format, which benefits a lot more people than just MSN. Eric