Duncan posted on Wed, 5 Nov 2025 16:43:22 -0000 (UTC) as excerpted: > David Chmelik posted on Tue, 21 Oct 2025 17:23:19 -0000 (UTC) as > excerpted: > > [Duncan wrote...] >>> And I forget what it was called but there was another set of "groups" >>> that were actually converted/gatewayed as well, from IIRC a >>> bulletin-board format... > > On my way to work ATM but quickly on this... > > The name I forgot was fidonet. Never knew much about it but I do recall > it being gatewayed to newsgroups/nntp back in the day. If I wasn't on > my way to work (I'll retrieve this after work, maybe then...) I'd take > the opportunity to wikipedia it and see how much I got wrong/right in my > conception from various mentions.
So did that wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FidoNet Fidonet originated with fido, a BBS[1] so named because the hardware upon which the original collection of programs was hosted was "a real mongrel". Fidonet was the store-and-forward system used such that bulletin boards could send messages to users on other fido systems, and was originally developed to process what we'd call email today. Typically this was transferred during late-night calls when long-distance rates were much cheaper -- this was well before the always-on Internet experience we take for granted today and people normally connected via modems over the same phone lines they used for voice calls during the day. One of the fidonet mail features was that (if allowed by the fido bbs sysop, sometimes it wasn't, to contain the time and thus cost of the long distance connections) files could be attached to messages, altho unlike today's email attachments encoded and embedded in the message itself, these "attached" files were actually transmitted separately *after* the message "packets" (a packet being all the messages destined for a single node, or later, for a single area's nodes). Echomail forums: This file attachment feature was then used to transfer "echomail", which was the fidonet equivalent of the community readable (and therefore actually more "bulletin board like than the (e)mail) messages that became usenet, thus bringing us back around to topic. These public messages were posted to and collected in "forums", basically the newsgroups of fidonet. Eventually the public echomail forums to became more popular than the private email messages that fidonet started with, to the point that for many users, what they referred to as "fidonet" was actually these public echomail forums. That of course implies that I was one of those people, believing fidonet was these public echonet/echomail forums, knowing about the bulletin board community as I learned computers in that era, tho I was still to young and poor to actually be involved in the dialup bulletin board community of the era (tho I sure *wanted* to be!), and knowing that fidonet was a bulletin board, but not realizing the references to fidonet-gatewayed newsgroups (by the time costs came down enough and my fortunes improved enough for me to get access and I first had a compuserv, then real ISP, account) were actually referring to the echomail/echonet component thereof. Meanwhile, the wikipedia fidonet entry says it peaked in 1996 (and indeed, there's a graph with a nice sharp pinnacle-peak in '96), with direct and eventually always-available/online internet access becoming more common and the need for fidonet's dialup store-and-forward model receding. What surprised me, however, is that at least as of 2016 (the latest cite), fidonet's decline had ceased and in fact the number of available nodes in some areas was increasing, now adapted to internet access such that people can telnet in over the internet from across the world without any additional cost over what they're paying for their internet access. The article also says that fidonet remains quite popular in areas with restricted internet access, mentioning Russia, Ukraine, and other former republics of the USSR as where it's most popular, (again as of 2006 and 2016, the cites available) in areas where internet access remains restricted. Given the decline had ceased as of 2016, presumably even if it resumed, there's likely still an active fidonet community out there. Meanwhile, I'd always thought to investigate fidonet a bit more, and I guess now I have, tho realistically, this post will be my own fidonet/ echonet peak. FWIW gemini (inspired by gopher, and I just wikipedia's both gemini and gopher too) is on my "would be fun to investigate further... some day" list too, and as it's the only under current development protocol of the three, realistically it'd be my priority if I did get to the "maybe I'll actually install a client" stage. Of course in practice, getting back into nntp binaries is on that list for me too, and the only one that, given my pan install and list activity and still most of a TB block account unused, the highest priority and the one most likely to become reality. (FWIW, my "it's getting my free time" project OTM is catching up on years worth of LWN Linux (kernel and other) tech news. Fortunately or unfortunately, while I am catching up, I started with January 2016 in January and am now in June 2019, so should hit my February-set goal of 2020/covid era /at/ /least/ by EOY. But at that rate of 3-years catchup per year (processing 4 years but getting a year more of articles while doing so), it'll be EOY 2023 by EOY 2026, and finally caught up EOY 2027 by EOY 2027. That's awhile still! Will I stay interested that long? Will real life interfere before then? Anyway, that's been my free-time- project of 2025 at least, so no back-to-binaries, or gemini-project, or old Master of Orion (DOS edition, update 1993!) I still find interesting to play that was the reason I didn't do any covid LWN catchup (thus my avoiding it ATM), for the moment, and by projection anyway, thru 2027. ... If I maintain interest that long. But that I've kept at it nearing a year now and have processed nearing four years in that year... demonstrates that if I put my mind to doing it!... It follows that I've simply never put my mind to getting back into binaries... Maybe someday (after 2027?)... or maybe not.) --- [1] BBS: "For the youngsters:" Bulletin board system, a bulletin board being software that made available community resources to a community of dialup users back when modems were common but the internet wasn't yet widely available (at least at "common person" rates), much like a physical bulletin board hosts generally public community messages but of course it's possible to post (encoded or not) private messages (email, for BBSs) to such a real bulletin board as well. The analogy isn't a perfect fit, but BBSs is what they were called. -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman _______________________________________________ Pan-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/pan-users
