From: murph@buscard.fidonet.org (Brian Murphy)
Newsgroups: alt.bbs
Subject: Fidonet editorial: Jennings
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 92 10:04:08 EDT
Reply-To: murph@buscard.fidonet.org (Brian Murphy)
Organization: The Business Card (BBS), Lawrence, MA - Data: 508-682-5329

FidoNews 8-44                  Page 1                       4 Nov 1991

======================================================================
                              EDITORIAL
======================================================================

Editorial: Editorial... or message from the stars?

by Tom Jennings (1:1/1)

Warning: this is rather long. The whole middle part is about history,
and power. It is editorializing at its worst. Skip to the next group of
*'s if this displeases you. (You were warned.)

                                * * * * *

Another dull week here in FidoNewsville. I have good news, and I have
bad news. The good news is, I found a replacement for the aging hard
disk I've been using here for some time, given to me by Vince Periello
as a bribe to get me to go to FIDOCON91. It worked, so did the drive,
and now that the event's over, the drive seems to be headed for history
too. Admittedly, it was old to start with, and I spun it 24 hrs/day for
a year, so I can hardly complain. It never failed me, but started
getting senile in the high sectors. Its replacement is a 3.5" 80 meg
SCSI drive. It's soooo q-u-i-e-t...

But anyways I'm avoiding the point, which is I lost an article. I wish I
could blame it on the disk, but I did it myself, by "MOVE *.ART
\FIDONEWS", only I moved the directory and it mashed all the files into
one little pile. Only the last one was saved.

And another article, of some importance, was never delivered, for some
unknown technical reason.

                        * * * * *

Personally, I've heard a few references to "anarchy" in FidoNet this
week alone, and Thom Henderson has something to say about it too (and I
agree with the gist of his article).

I do wish people were more into anarchism than anarchy. Look it up.

Along these lines --

I bet you didn't know that REGIONS ASSIGNED THEIR OWN IMPORTANCE. Never,
ever, were nets "part of" or contained within regions. Here's the
original story, much condensed.

In 1985 there were only "nodes". Just a flat, point to point scheme. (As
most #)$(&* mailers treat the net today, but I'm jumping ahead). After
only a few times of having Fido make a bunch of calls to the same city
accross the country to deliver one message each, this thing now known as
"host routing" became quite obvious. At first it was done with a simple
text substitution in Fido's packet. It later became the full-featured
router that Fido still contains, and most system simplement in some way.

It next became obvious that FidoNet nodes "clumped" together where human
population was densest; cities, mainly. The NET/NODE addressing scheme
became a formal definition of the incoming host (the /0) we'd been
manually entering, and the nodes surrounding it kept their same node
numbers, but became part of the local net.

As a short example, nodes 4 10, 22, 16, 17, all in St. Louis Missouri,
used 16 as "incoming host" which redistributed mail delivered to it for
nodes 4, 10, 17, 22, etc. The incoming host remained as node 16 (in this
case) but also the magic value "0". The net was named "100", so they
became 100/4, 100/16... and the host, 100/0. (There was a cute trick to
allow transparent backwards compatibility to non-net-aware software that
worked reasonably well.)

It was important that the addressing scheme of NET/NODE be consistent
throughout the net, but many nodes simply weren't near any other nodes,
certainly none within the telco parameters that made for a "local call"
(US telco includes calls to a limited area as part of the monthly fee;
very advantageous for FidoNet!)

Since the outlying nodes could be hundreds of miles/KMs from the nearest
net (nearly 1000 miles here in the West!), we formed the idea of the
REGION.

Read this next part carefully; you'll need to un-learn the current
REGION scheme to understand it.

We picked large, arbitrary chunks of the country (US-only then,
remember) and named them "regions". Each had a host (/0), who did
exactly what a net host did; keep a list of nodes in their region. The
difference was, the region/0 merely kept the list of nodes NOT OTHERWISE
IN A NET. Period.

As the net grew, and nodes appeared, they'd be distributed again amongst
population density boundaries. The number of nodes in a region would
grow, making more work for the region host, but at some point a "clump"
of nodes would appear (in a new city, for instance) and that clump would
split off -- into a new net, thereby lowering the workload of the region
host. The region hosts actual, constant workload then grew at a rate
much lower than the network overall.

There was much more planning and understanding of the social scheme and
organization than is appreciated. I hadn't realized just how lost the
original process had gotten until recently when talking to people who've
been around since 86 or so. It's kinda depressing, actually.

I created FidoNews in 1984 or 85 to act as a "metanetwork", to give us a
method to talk about the network itself, and to provide a forum for our
other, non-technical and non-FidoNet communications needs. (And within a
few months, I had an article by an ex-military guy complaining about
retirement issues, for which I got questioned on for appropriateness. (I
wasn't flamed; that didn't happen then. No it wasn't the "good ole
days"; it was simply a much, much smaller crowd.)

But anyways -- REGIONS were never, ever meant to be anything more than a
net host. The current power mongering started when the nodelist-fragment
collection scheme was given to the region hosts, and they grew it from
there.

Nets are *not* contained in regions. The model was mathematical, not
geographical. Sets, not political groupings. I find it all very
depressing.

Last and far from least, and no one will believe this I'm sure, it
sounds so far-fetched in today's locked-down bully/boss-ridden thug net,
but -- Overthrow was designed in from the start, and discussed
explicitly by everyone involved, as an integral part of the checks and
balances. The /0 was NOT supposed to be a position of power, but a
position of *responsibility*, on a paper throne.

If the net host was a complete jerk, the net members could create a new
nodelist fragment themselves, and pass it on. Votes? "Permission" from
"above"? Screw that shit. Toss 'em out on their ear!

Every sysop in FidoNet, including and especially myself, is responsible
for letting this happen. We gave the bullies their power. It is not, and
never, too late.

Keep this in mind. You might need it some day. Maybe this is how we got
here though. It wasn't meant to be a machanism for bullies to get their
way, but for otherwise-tolerant ordinary sysop folx, who get fed up, to
work around the 0 and replace them with someone less obnoxious. Anything
can be abused.

Most people aren't used to having control of their lives. When given to
them, they freak out and get stupid, and think they ahve to emulate the
jerks, since they're the only thing around as a model. Oh well.


PS: did you know that HOST ROUTING IN FIDONET IS MANDATORY?! Fer #$*#$%
sakes!!! What in hell do you think the damn #$#$@# net/0 node is for?!
Prestige? To push people around? Banish people you don't like? The 0th
node is supposed to accept mail for all nodes within their net, and
forward that mail onward, without fail, barring hardware failure,
without comment, editorial or censorship, and it better be a damn good
excuse. Period. If you don't like it, don't be a /0.

                                * * * * *

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