Letters to the Editor

• It's Time to Act
• Thanks for Taking the Hard Edge
• Had Fido Excluded Teenagers

Fidonet is Dying -
It's Time to Act
Email from Derrick, info@soluware.nl

Dear Doug,

I just finished reading the most recent Fidonet newsletter. Yes, Fidonet is dying unless we find a way to bring it back to life, and I think I have a solution for this. You said the reader should write if anything came up. In fact something came up months ago.

I don't know about the country where you come from, but I suppose you might have heard from cable-modem. It's basically the death- penalty for Fido because it makes people stop using their FrontDoor, FMail, GoldED, or whatever package they use to dial in at their fido- provider (proFIDOr? :) ).

Anyway, since the Internet is practically unstopable, we'd better use it's popularity. None of the services Internet is providing the community with has ever exceeded the warm, personal fidomail. I personally recently hooked up with Fido again, now I have contacted our national host (Jan Vermeulen, the Netherlands, 2:280/0). I wasn't able to use Fido because several hosts were dropping like flies.

What we need is something similar to Fido. Newsgroups are nothing, they usually have no moderator and are so general that no one will feel at home. Plus, no e-mail editor can support multiple areas.

So I thought of myself (you still guess, what the hell have cable- modems got to do anything with what you are saying?) ... What's e-mail. It's nothing but a simple host supporting the POP3/SMTP protocol. What we simply need to do is set up one or more mailservers, develop a new protocol and a mailclient to support the new protocol. A cable-modem can make it possible to set up a mailserver with several gigabytes for mail and file-storage without paying much.

Such a server can be accessed from anywhere, because due to the cablemodem it is in the air for 24 hours a day, affordable for the common user. I was thinking about such a mailsystem, and I definitely am going to develop the software for it (the server will definitely be Linux, the client can be both Linux, Windows, DOS (for those that still want to pick up the mail with something similar to FrontDoor/Intermail or such a system).

We can later extend it with short-message-services, voice-mail, videoconferencing and such. With one or more commercial mail- areas with interestgroups that people can connect to. This way we could even get the system sponsored so a bigger server can be put up which allows faster and better access.

Through webadvertising we could get people's attention and create a new rage that has Fidonet's looks and feels, the graphical user- interface people want, and all the gadgets they get from other servers like ICQ / mIRC / Powwow and all that stuff.

We're talking an offline mailclient here. One that picks up the mail like any simple POP3/SMTP client, but with the fidonet advantages. I'd propose the oldfassioned look and feel, as we know it with the DOS editors, and a more advanced version that gives the possibility to create messages that have an HTML look, but that's something for the future. Furthermore, I want to be include hotlinks so people can refer to webpages, ftp sites, but even files that can be downloaded directly from the mailserver. For these files can then be generated a filerequest that will be picked up next time the user picks up the mail. The mailclient should be able to be setup with a scheduler to pick up the mail at preprogrammed times, unlike those 'dumb' clients like MS Exchange.

This really can become something, I have had several years (something like 6 or 7) experience in Fidonet like networks, including DigitalNet, ( )lympic, Contactnet, Quazienet and several others, I know the messaging- services like ICQ, mIRC, Powwow and know their (dis)advantages.

With the help of those people that have supported fidonet for the past decade, I am certain that we can create something the internetworld is ready for.

Normal 'fido-standards' can apply, such as moderators, a committee that handles incoming suggestions, solve conflicts and such. I want a system that is controlable but is free for users.

I personally want to invest my time and money in it to create a system that will become popular among old fido-mailers that are now internetting and will think "hey, this looks familiar" and new users that can pick up just as easily.

How? Well, that's one of the things that users currently break their neck over. Many people (especially people NEW to computers) are used to a simple click-click graphical interface and find DOS applications disgusting and hard to use. For someone new to computers it's practically IMPOSSIBLE to set up a system like FrontDoor/Fmail/Golded because they have no knowledge whatsoever about the system.

The mailclient I want to develop must be simple to setup and use. I want to make it modular so people can easily plug in new technology. The basics must be a downloadable version from the internetsite that is hosted from the same server. This package contains all needed information to connect to the server. Installing the rest will be easy. A simple guide "What interests do you have" and click-click. Download the setup-information, setup the program, wait for authorisation from the host (ofcourse they should be able to receive general areas and write in areas with for example the attribute "guests allowed") and MAIL! :)

People that want to host their own network can do the same thing, get a copy of the server software and we can have several networks in no time at all, they could co-exist like before, and a user would only need one mailcient to access them all in an orderly fashion.

Let me know what you think, can we get a committee on it's feet and start designing standards, protocols, looks and feels? Are we ready for something like that and can we pull it off? I think we are, I think we can. I just hope that I can count on your cooperation.

If I sent this to the wrong person, I'm sure you know where this e-mail should go. Please forward it to everyone you think is interested (and I mean qualified people that know the (dis)advantages as well) so we can come up with something.

I really hope you will write me back. I'm going to prepare the work I've been thinking about for the last several months. I hope that I will get the support I need.

Thanks Doug,
Derrick

* Origin: Time for a comeback (2:280/33, 2:280/1044, 2:280/1045)

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Editor's Reply: Derrick, I don't know whether you sent this to the wrong person or not. In a sense, I may be wrong because I'm a poor innovator. Oh, I've made my contributions to BBSing; I'm a decent conversationalist and a competent administrator. But it's always been people like you who have moved and shaken and brought about change. For my part, I'll post this excellent visionary comment on my editorial in hopes that your fellow visionaries see it and help you shape the future of Fido.

Thanks for Taking the Hard Edge
Email from Chris R. Evans <teknopup@bigvalley.net>

Thanks man for taking the hard edge and saying it like it is !

BUT one thing BBSes have that the internet doesnt seem to have readily available to all is FREE access.. Yes, there are/were bbses that charged for access but even then they had non paying time limited accounts which ISPs no not have. We as a Network have to reinvent BBSing to attact the masses, but with the cost of ISP administration and setup so sky high (eg $33K minimum) its is really impossible for the hobbist sysop to do that.

Also, another things that doesnt help our plight, is that local computer 'zines (like CCN) dropped the BBS list, in favor of the ISP directory (which is really small and lame), if they allow the BBS list to come back eg published so ppl know of our bbses, then we'd get more callers.

.. comments welcome

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Editor:

I don't really know if I said it like it is. My prognostication has always been weakest where the future is concerned...

We've got to seperate two factors here... what the "user" pays and what the "provider" pays. Someone just using the web in the US usually pays $20 or less a month for the access, and most think no more of it than the basic charges for their telephone. Once the ISP fee is discounted, the whole internet is essentially free.

Certainly someone wishing to be an ISP is in for substantial expenses... but that's not the only way to establish a web presence. Peple are putting up home pages for practically nothing... and the home pages are technically more sophisticated than the early BBSes. Live sysop chat is tough to manage with a home page, but what other BBS function can't be managed?

There may be some tactics beyond my ken right now which would attract users to bbses, but I don't think it's simply a matter of letting them know we're out there. Six years ago, everyone knew we were out there, and they still chose to migrate to the web.

Had Fido Excluded Teenagers
Echomail from FIDONEWS Echo
Winston Smith, 1:101/101

-> But over in the Z1C echo, Stewart Hornsberger comes to our rescue,
-> fending off several of Fido's more "experienced" sysops in an
-> argument over maturity. Though I haven't examined all the messages
-> related to the string, it appears that Stewart revealed his age of
-> 19 on his web page, and was subsequently called down for
-> "immaturity" in some of his subsequent posting.

Hmm... if a rule excluding nineteen-year-old's had been in effect in the 1980's, then there would have been no Fido boards in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A. . At the time of the release of the IBM PC, the Boston Computer Society was running Ward Christensen's RBBS package. It was a nineteen year old M.I.T. freshman named Buzz Moschetti who got FidoNET off the ground in Boston by running The Buzz Board Fido. When the Boston Computer Society was told about message networking, they replied that their members came to them, calling their boards, and that they didn't need to send their messages out to their members. It took almost a year of arguing before they finally saw any advantage to echomail (such as linking their Pioneer Valley Computer Club UMASS University club and their New Hampshire and Rhode Island chapters to their Boston boards). One of the top Macintosh sysops of Boston -- Zeff Wheelock -- started as a sysop when he was tweleve years old, and many of the famous early TBBS TRS-80 boards, such as Milliways TBBS of Concord, Massachusetts, U.S.A., were started by fourteen year old high school freshmen. If you took away the teenage sysop, fully two-thirds of the B.B.S.es founded in Boston, Massachusetts in the early 1980's would have never been started!