On 16 Nov 2019 at 10:34a, Terry Roati pondered and said...
 
 TR> The internet was the death of Fidonet, instead of users spending time on
 TR> a BBS reading echos, downloading files and playing games the users
 TR> slowly moved to the internet so Fidonet lost it's user base and the
 TR> expertise it had.

While the rise of HTML and other protocols over TCP/IP helped to fuel the
departure of some from FTN stuff I'd say 'the Internet' today is actually
keeping FTN efforts alive. With the demise of POTs in a lot of the globe,
running FTN over TCP/IP is about the only way to enjoy our hobby.

 TR>  O> I wonder why other networks do work great without any policy? E.g. XMP
 TR>  O> ActivityPub, Matrix, Zot, SIP, Psyc, bittorrent, IPFS, ...
 TR> 
 TR> Most other networks are normally run by a one or a small number of sysops
 TR> which works well till the guy at the top goes then it collapses, as
 TR> history has shown. It is easy to criticize Fidonet but it managed to
 TR> connect the whole world and 30,000+ sysops, no other net will ever get
 TR> close to that.

Kudos to the folks who created the means to scale a FTN to 30,000 nodes.
You're point about single point dependency for othernets is not lost on me
also and a challenge for me personally to keep chipping away at. I have not
read much of this thread. When it turns in to acrimony I tend to turn off. If
I am correct Oli is advocating for change and challenging the status quo (all
good things IMHO for a reasoned discussion) and I heard mention of
decentralization which I am also keen to explore in Z21.

Anywhoo... good morning from New Zealand where Sunday is fine and sunny.
Looks like your PXW stuff may be getting sorted :)

Best, Paul

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/03 (Windows/32)