Text 11420, 59 rader
Skriven 2008-03-22 20:26:54 av Maurice Kinal (1:261/38)
     Kommentar till en text av Robert Fowler
Ärende: not quite time to be singing "Happy Trails"
===================================================
Hey Robert!

> The attrition among Fido sysops virtually destroyed
> the distribution network, at least with respect to users
> having access to local dial in boards. Net after net died,
> despite the resistance of Fidonet to move to the net (not
> necessarily the web).

I'd have to conclude the above is an excellent assessment of what happened and
to a lesser extent why it happened.  I think there is a little more to the why
part than is covered above but of course any additional information I'd offer
is to a large part hindsight and speculation. Might be worth exploration if it
makes a difference to the future but all indications before and since say
otherwise.  Your above comment is valid methinks as is.

> As you know, most of the software for running boards
> was DOS based

I'd add with with poor standardization practices.  If it were only DOS then it
would have been salvageable but most of the FTN standards had little or nothing
to do with serial programming on which it was all based upon.  Now Fido is
stuck with extremely shoddy headers which aren't worth porting to even 'modern'
DOS, if I can be so kind to call DOS modern.  The headers need to be given ye
ol' heave-ho.  They aren't needed and I'd argue should have never been adopted
in the first place.

> At least with internet distribution, anyone with net access
> could participate.

Nice theory but as I say above the headers made it highly impractable as is. 
Other than abandonware, there has been nothing going on within Fido to make it
accessable to those with internet access, including the www.  That is still the
case and more than likely always will be for whatever little time is left for
Fido.

> Most personal ISP accounts expressly prohibit
> any type of web hosting in their service agreements.

Excellent point.  I brought that up over a decade ago.  To me personally it was
never an issue but accepted Fido standards stood in the way of actual progress.
 That has been the number one reason looking at it from a sysop's point of
view.  I have a number of very good options I could have taken wrt internet
access, including web and ftp.  It was the accepted FTN formats that screwed it
all up from my point of view at the time.  Still is btw even as a user although
to a lesser degree since as demonstrated by my posted examples FTN headers
don't even enter into it whatsoever but could depending on the approach.

> Oh well, enjoy it while it's here. :-)

For sure!  You too eh?

I thought the 'last one standing' thingy was a somewhat successful message
generator a little while back.

Life is good,
Maurice

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