🚀 go-pugleaf

iahg0490@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu writes:
   Does anyone know if it is possible to send email to users of the commercial
   computer services, such as CompuServe, from internet?

(*exasperated sigh*)

CompuServe: There is not, but there will be Real Soon Now.  Yes, I
know, it's been delayed and delayed and delayed.  Tell me about it,
folks - we've been fitfully hammering on the CServe folks to get their
end of the beastie finished, and I had hoped we'd get it done before
the end of January, but alas it didn't come to pass.  I'm hoping to
get them to finish dealing with it by the end of next week.  We are
very, very close - but don't hold your breath.  Nameservers for
compuserve.com have been alive since late September and pathalias data
was published at that time as well, so whenever it is finished it can
go to work immediately.  Please do NOT "try it out" or "test" it at
this time - there is a (somewhat unreliable) heuristic in the current
alpha gateway which prevents mail from passing not between CServe and
Ohio State, and if you manage to fool it and get through (a couple of
people have, and my level of tolerance for such shenanigans is
dropping *really* fast), you'll seriously irritate some people inside
CServe.  I'll also guarantee unconditionally that CServe users
*cannot* get back out right now without knowing some deliberately
obscure magic cookies, and the people who know them know not to
advertise what they are.

Others: Rick Adams mentioned at the UUNET/Usenet BOF last week at
Usenix that he is working on getting some of the other commercial
providers to gateway through UUNET.  In large part, he is running into
parochial attitudes demanding X.400 mailers, which he doesn't run.  He
did mention that he has recently had surprising success in discussions
with (I think) Genie, where both his side and the other will provide
some simple headers for each other.

--Karl Kleinpaste
acting postmaster@compuserve.com