Hey Kees!

 KvE> All the above was implemented on very expensive mainframe and
 KvE> minicomputers.

Back in the late 1980's VMS was most often the going thing on mainframes
whereas so-called minicomputers often ran minix or BSD, usually BSD given it's
earlier history.  Seems to me that minix dominated the 16-bit architectures way
back then and dumb terminals wired into a VMS driven mainframe was all the
rage.  However I suppose this all depends on what one was exposed to at that
time and your posted history is likely correct for early Fidonet development. 
My first exposure to Unix was Sun's SparcStation running Solaris in the early
1990's.

Given the above, from my perspective back then, DOS never stood a chance.  I
never bothered with PC's until the first 32-bit processors started rolling out
and even then made it a point to replace the crippled 16-bit software they
usually came bundled with (5.25" bootable floppies at the start).

 KvE> No, it is still there and is not maintained.

Business as usual.  Good to see some things never change.  ;-)

 KvE> If you force the conservative people out of Fidonet, the net will
 KvE> lose it's current already weak momentum and die.

Those people don't exist and what you see are actually cyber ghosts.  Having
said that, the conversion routine I use for local display of messages relies on
the builtin obsolescence you appear to be referring to in the above quote.

Life is good,
Maurice

... Don't cry for me I have vi.
--- GNU bash, version 4.3.22(1)-release (x86_64-atom-linux-gnu)