Folks from surrounding neighborhoods drop by to see what's available. They strike up conversations with the homeowner and each other. It's a social event and an opportunity to pick up an old lamp for the rec room. Now, imagine driving up to a bustling garage where tables are piled high with all the current software for your computer.
Some tables are like record store racks, with pop songs sorted into rock, electronic, hip hop.
And it's all free. Hotline started as an alternative to the FTP protocol, but in the venerable traditional of the street finding new uses for things, it is becoming something completely different from its creators' original intentions. When you use the simple client program to log on to a Hotline server, you can read the news, see who else is there, and chat with the host and the other visitors. You browse through dozens of files that the host has arranged, dropping your own contributions as you go. The nerve centers of the Hotline world are Trackers, meta-servers that track what Hotline servers are currently running.