CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_



Reported by David Lippke/UTEXAS

LISTSERV BOF Minutes

The LISTSERV BOF at the IETF meeting in St Louis went well.  It was
attended by a positive subset of the Internet Mail Extensions Working
Group plus a number of people involved with the applications area of the
IETF. In addition, Bruce Crabill, Larry Snodgrass, and John Wobus
attended, therefore the full BITNET contingent was probably represented.
However, it was clear that a number of the internetists had made an
effort to educate themselves on LISTSERV and at least one had experience
with maintaining a LISTSERV list.

David Lippke worked through about 35 foils which roughly followed the
outline below:


  1. BITNET background (size, growth, topology, traffic statistics).
  2. LISTSERV background (history, present status, various statistics).
  3. Definition of the original problem.
  4. Overview of the main concepts, features, and facilities (13
     points).
  5. Two foils worth of list peering and its application.
  6. Five foils on ``distribute''.
  7. A bit on relayed file distribution.
  8. Two foils on loop detection/suppression.
  9. Six foils as a detailed look at list configuration.
 10. A bit on NAD capabilities.
 11. A slow three foils on user commands and options.
 12. A bit on list archival and file storage (it was stressed several
     times throughout that standard list archival was a big deal).
 13. Two foils on the database facility.
 14. Then about 3 foils giving David's opinion of what's needed in the
     way of LISTSERV capabilities on the internet.



The whole session was rather interactive with at least a question or two
asked on each foil and the responses to the questions occasionally
turning into short discussions.  It was a good crowd to talk to since
everyone had already done some (or maybe alot) of thinking about related
issues.  Consequently, there wasn't much left in regard to LISTSERV
itself when David reached the end of his foils.

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Phill Gross took over the discussion at that point and concluded with
the group that a ``LISTSERV'' Working Group should be formed since there
are clearly things which need to be done and there's also enough
interest in the project to make things happen.  One person said that
they would like to see a basic set of user operations (upon lists)
defined first so that they could proceed with a simple implementation of
those while a compatible superset was developed over time.  There seemed
to be general agreement with this notion.



Phill then suggested that a list be formed to proceed with the Working
Group discussion before the July IETF. Chris Myers of Washington
University volunteered listdev@wugate.wustl.edu and this was accepted.
To subscribe send e-mail to listserv@wugate.wustl.edu with a body part
of ``add listdev''.  To unsubscribe send e-mail to
listserv@wugate.wustl.edu with a body part of ``delete listdev''.  To
send a message to the list send e-mail to listdev@wugate.wustl.edu.  The
initial membership will be taken from the attendance roster with the
addition of Eric.  Anyone who is interested in participating in the
Working Group is welcome to join the list



A PostScript copy of the foils is available upon request from David
Lippke.

Attendees

Bruce Crabill            bruce@umdd.umd.edu
David Crocker            dcrocker@pa.dec.c
Ralph Droms              droms@bucknell.edu
Johnny Eriksson          bygg@sunet.se
Demi Getschko            "DEMI@FPSP.HEPNET"
Phillip Gross            pgross@nri.reston.va.us
Russ Hobby               rdhobby@ucdavis.edu
Neil Katin               katin@eng.sun.com
Shelly Knueven           shelly@wugate.wustl.edu
Vincent Lau              vlau@sun.com
Eliot Lear               lear@net.bio.net
David Lippke             lippke@utdallas.edu
Chris Myers              chris@wugate.wustl.edu
Lawrence Snodgrass       snodgras@educom.edu
Bernhard Stockman        bygg@sunet.se
Gregory Vaudreuil        gvaudre@nri.reston.va.us
John Wobus               jmwobus@suvm.acs.syr.edu



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