In article <CMM.0.90.2.723772294.kristoff at net.bio.net>, kristoff at NET.BIO.NET (Dave Kristofferson) writes:
>>> ask the SAS-L and STAT-L groups how they like it. LISTSERVs do work,
>> however much some people don't like them.
>> Una,
>> We are not going to get into a technical discussion here on the
> reasons for our viewpoint. The pros and cons of LISTSERV have been
> debated with religious fervor in many places, and I'm not about to
> waste time in a biology forum on this issue. We have reasons for
> doing things the way that we do based on over five years of experience
> running this system which included using LISTSERV up until about a
> year ago. While I am a physical biochemist by training who did a lot
> of computing in the course of his research, the people that have
> worked with me in this endeavor over the years are computer scientists
> with a lot of background in what they do.
Una, I just want to add some support for Dave's viewpoint re LISTSERV.
Please believe him, LISTSERV, and the *many* broken implementations
thereof, are a real pain-in-the-neck for system admins. The horrors
and many sleepless nights caused by mail loops from LISTSERVs are enough
for life. I might in the same vein that an equal pain-in-the-neck are
the many wrongly configured sendmails on Un*x machines, when you're
trying to run a *very* busy mail server (Netserv at EMBL) ...
*sigh* ... the less that can (and will !) break, the better.
just my 2 Pfennigs worth,
Roy Omond
System Manager/PostMaster etc. etc.
European Molecular Biology Laboratory
Heidelberg, Germany.
