Letters to the Editor

• An open letter to Charles Hunter
• New Principles

An open letter to Charles Hunter
Email from Steve Fredette <jesussmokespot@yahoo.ca>

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New Principles
Email from Luke.Kolin@connect.xerox.com

I would like to comment on David Smith's recent article regarding first principles of Fidonet. The Internet vs. Fidonet debate has been going on in my memory since approximately 1994, and I think a few things have changed over the years that deserve addressing.

I should begin by bidding adieu to the sentiment I often saw at the beginning that the Internet was 'just a passing fad' - that the whole thing would crash under the weight of spam and BBS systems would enjoy a new renaissance. I don't shed too many tears for its passing, since each day when I hook up to the Internet it never ceases to amaze me the sheer volume of useful content I can access quickly (far faster than calling a BBS or freq) and with zero marginal cost.

I think that David misses some of the point when he addressed the lack of useful interactive content on the Web, and characterises it as "whatever a machine can provide out of it's [sic] canned responses & stored files." I respectfully disagree. There is valuable interactive content on the Internet - it just takes some searching. For example, I am a regular participant in Joe Grasmick's US immigration web site form (http://www.grasmick.com) which is a very valuable resource for Canadians working and living in the United States. I ocasionally participate on a Toyota MR2 owners' web site forum that continually provides me with excellent content.

I will readily concede that it has taken a fair amount of time to reach this point - and part of the battle has been in the creation of effective discussion applications on the Web that facilitate search, browsing and easy reading. We are reaching that point today. What has amazed me all these years is that FidoNet has never changed the fundamental technology upon which it operates. I don't think for a second that that a text-based dial-up technology is superior to a GUI display that, thanks to high-speed lines, allows thousands of users to connect to a site at once.

From a content provider's point of view, the greatest aspect of the Internet has been eliminating the necessity of worrying about infrastructure and allowing one to concentrate on content. I don't need to have multiple modems and phone lines - if I host on an ISP or other hosting service, I don't even need to own a computer. If we consistently suggest that FidoNet's greatest value is its content, why don't we take the principles that worked so well for FidoNet and implement a Web-based solution that will achieve the same end? Lord knows it wasn't FTS-0001 and ZMH that got FidoNet where it was in its heyday.

Cheers!

--
Luke J Kolin (KLJ-ORG)
Senior Consultant
Xerox Connect, Inc. (Atlanta)
770-569-5683