Hello Alex.

01 Jun 06 08:53, you wrote to me:

 AS>>> So why, the hell, those poor odds that still are there so
 AS>>> strongly resist to anything new ?

 MV>> Because you don't mess with museum pieces. You keep them as they
 MV>> are as best as you can.

 AS> Only somebody quite crazy can place a living thing into museum.

There is a train museum in the nearby city of Utrecht here. Most trains are
on stationary display, but some are still running and yoi can make short
trips with them:

http://wwhttp://www.spoorwegmuseum.nl/en/index.html

Fidonet is not a living thing, but is is still running. It is a museaum
piece nevertheless. At least in Western Europe and most other places. The
users are gone, we have become a sysop network. We are like a shipping
company without passengers or cargo but we still have the ships, the
captains and the pilots and we just keep the ships running for fun.

 AS>>> To start with Z7, for example.

 MV>> That is not new. As you said; it has been there for many years.
 MV>> And contrary to FidoNet as a whole, zone 7 was *not* a success.

 AS> Zone 7 never existed because big boys never allowed it to appear.

That is not what you said before. You said there has been a zone 7 since
1995 or so. What you mean of course is that it never was part of Fidonet.

Did you ever consider that the failure of Z7 is due to the fact that it
simply was a bas idea from the start?

 AS> It seems they placed FidoNet into museum a long time ago, right at
 AS> the moment of its triumph to freeze the situation.

Triumph? The moment of triumph if you want to call it that, happened over
ten years ago when there were 35000 nodes, over 150.000 registered points
and maybe half a million users. The users and most of the points have left
for greener pastures and only a fraction of the sysops remains. Let's face
it, Fidonet is almost history. Even in R50. Look at the nodelist
statistics...

 AS> This explains why it failed.

It did not fail. But it is near the end of its useful life.

 AS>  You can't succeed being in a museum.

You can still enjoy the toys and play with them though....

Michiel

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