Dallas Hinton:

DH> The work done by Tom Jennings in 1983-84 resulted in a
DH> bulletin board system (BBS) called "Fido because the
DH> assorted hardware together was a real mongrel". The
DH> software linkage between 2 systems became a network and
DH> spawned the name FidoNet.

Indeed, FidoNet started as a network of BBSes, with the
necessary extensions for semi-automated article propagation.

DH> The use of 2 capital letters is correct and is a (now
DH> expired) trademark.  The program has also been called
DH> FIDONET (by Ben Baker) but that wasn't what was
DH> trademarked by Tom.

This may have been due to a convention or limitation of a
case-insensitive file system, cf. lowercase program names in
Linux in spite of its case-sensitive file system.

DH> Source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FidoNet and personal knowledge from communications with Tom and others involved in the creation of FidoNet.

Since you wrote it in a single long line, I for a moment
thought that was such a great page on Wikipedia documenting
personal knowledge of FidoNet (-: But of course personal
communication with a carrier of such personal knowledge is
even more interesting and pleasing.  Is there a way to ask
an autograph over FidoNet?  Should be an auto-ASCII-graph,
probably.

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