ART100@PSUVM.PSU.EDU ("Andy Tefft 862-6728", 814) (11/15/89)
This is mainly directed at Brint Cooper and Murph Sewall, but I posted it in case anyone else has any ideas. It seems to me that there is a not-so-hard way to allow people to stay in touch with info-apple by mail. It wouldn't work for everyone, namely people who can't access the Bitnet listservs, but then again most of them it would seem are uucp people who get usenet anyway. There exist at a few places (PSUVM is one of them) listserv-usenet gateways. For example, apple2-l is automatically put in the group bit.listserv.apple2-l. If we kept the bitnet list info-app@ndsuvm1 open and gatewayed it to bit.listserv.info-app (maybe it's possible to even have it gatewayed right into comp.sys.apple), this would seem to basically replace info-apple@brl.mil with info-app@ndsuvm1.bitnet. A question, though: How many sites get bit.listserv.* groups, and how difficult is it for sites which don't have them now to get at least the important one? If it's possible to put it directly into comp.sys.apple, though, this isn't even important. PSUVM automatically sends followups and posts for bit.listserv groups to the correct place by calling the groups moderated and setting the moderator to the list address. Are the people who are affected by losing info-apple@brl.mil mostly able to subscribe on the Bitnet side?? I would think it would be fairly simple for someone who can receive the bitnet list to forward mail to those who can't (there shouldn't be many). If anyone thinks this is feasible, we can start talking to the people who would have to make it happen (first and foremost I think would be Bill Verity, WHV@PSUVM, who is responsible for the listserv-->usenet gatewaying at our site). Note that this would make it possible to have both a discussion list and a technical list, with listserv handling both and either being equally easy or difficult) to subscribe to. (Of course I realize that the best solution is just to get another host to handle info-apple (-: ) Andy