From: davidg@aegis.or.jp (Dave McLane)
Newsgroups: alt.bbs
Subject: Re: Is BBS the correct name?
Keywords: BBS jargon, semantics, growth, info systems
Date: 11 Sep 92 22:21:40 GMT
Organization: Aegis Society, Kyoto Japan

toma@sail.LABS.TEK.COM (Tom Almy) writes:

>In article <72080@apple.Apple.COM> sac@Apple.COM (Steve Cisler) writes:
>>I'd like to hear from BBS sysops and others about what
>>the limits are tothe definition or an electronic bulletin
>>board system.

>Well if you want to get technical, if the system has means to leave
>public messages for other callers, then it is a Bulletin Board System.
>That is, after all, how things got started. I would like to add the
>word "free" to the definition, but I'm sure that would be debated these
>days!

I think there are 'BBS' and 'free BBS'; why try to lump them all
together, it's confusing enough as it is. 

As it is, 'free' has two similar but different meanings: One means
'freely portable' meaning you are free to move the data to other
systems (compared to systems like CompuServe which claim copyright
and/or rights of assembly). The other means 'at no charge to the
user'. 

>By this definition, a system offering either local public messages,
>fido echoes, or netnews would be a BBS, as would Prodigy (!).
>On the other hand, a system that only allowed file downloads or
>private messages (such as most "support BBSes") would not qualify.

I think the definition is still too broad. IMHO another quality for
a 'BBS' is relatively short messsages. Some of this has to do with
the limits of the software or the way the sysop has set it up (on
the order of ~100 lines, or ~4096 bytes). IMHO, the more or less
default limit of 60K for USENET leaves it out of the BBS class. 

>>Is it a state of mind?

>Certainly!

I think so too and one of the main features of the BBS-like state of
mind is an incessant desire to accomplish things with as little
hardware and money as possible. IMHO this comes from the desire on
the part of the sysop (who is laying out the cash) to keep the
cash-cost down as much as possible and invest his/her time instead. 

For example, we see people seriously considering if the OS occupies
10 MB or 100 MB and how to pack messages into smaller and smaller
spaces through very interesting software/configuration maneuvers. 

This is really a challenging task and I enjoyed doing it myself for
years. But a certain point was reached where I couldn't afford the
hardware/software for additional challenges so I reorganized the
system so user's invested the cash and I invested the time. Now
there are some tradeoffs possible. Which will make the system
easier and more efficient for people? Scrunching programs and data
to fit affordable hardware, or get some more hardware and spend the
time working on other things?

This kind of thinking *doesn't* seem the usual way to go about
things in the classic BBS state of mind, so I don't claim Aegis is a
BBS.  However, I do have a local-only newsgroup called aegis.bbs
which is freely open to anybody who wants to sign up for a default
account: they don't have pay any money for the account, they are
free to write whatever they want, and they can do anything they want
with what they get. There have been ~3 messages in the past 2 years.
Oh well ... at least I still have a free (aegis.)bbs :-)

Dave

--
Dave McLane 
JUNET: davidg@aegis.or.jp (ONLY within Japan: post otherwise)
Nagaokakyoshi, Kyoto Japan Tel: +81-75-951-1168 Fax: +81-75-957-1087