Hi, Michiel!

10 Dec 02 09:53, Michiel van der Vlist said to Alex Shakhaylo:

 AS>> If you track nodelist for a year or two you'll see that the
 AS>> number of ip nodes increases and the number of POTS ones
 AS>> decreases.

 MV> That has been the trend over the last two years. Trends however have
 MV> been known to reverse or take a tangent.

Do you play Forex ? 

 MV> Predicting the future is risky business. If you believe you can do it
 MV> by just reading the trend, I suggest you stay away from the stock
 MV> market. ;-)

Oh .. I see .. you play stock market :-)

 AS>> For me it is clear sign about the fidonet future (if any).

 MV> Yes, there is the "if any" part too.

 MV> If FidoNet cuddles too closely with the InterNet she runs the risk of
 MV> being assimilated by it, thus ceasing to exist as we know it. The
 MV> trend is already there. The use of netmail decreases whereas the use
 MV> of e-mail between FidoNet participants increases...

Well, I cannot predict the future, but I can see what is happening now.
Let us divide the internet as ip (transport level) and as a global
network connecting people. You may see a variety of protocols which
use ip as transport (gopher/http/ftp/ICQ/IRC/news/forums/chats etc)
and I see fidonet also benefits from this transport. Then if you look
closer to the internet, you'll see that nowadays some P2P communities
appear to use ip as a transport, but those communities has quite close
structure. I mean they are not internet, but they use ip transport.
I see here a common trend. I mean people need more than only transport,
they also need to be organised by some social mean. This makes me think
fidonet has its future, but to achieve it fidonet should be changed in
a way, at least it should be open to the new transport which is far better
than modem2modem technology.

So here is my main idea. We can save fidonet as a community only in case
we will benefit from the modern technical possibilities. If we delay and
keep for old-fashion technology, nothing will save this community, it
will die step by step because new people don't join.

Bye, Sinc, Alex

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