Hi Trifle,

Good to see you here in the echos :)

> -> in general, it's better now that money has gotten out of the picture
> -> and the people that are left are those who truly are in the hobby for
> -> their enjoyment and not to make a buck.

> The tradition of free and open source software in UNIX world is what
> allowed the Internet to grow as quickly as it did.

That, and the government push to make it available made quite the
difference. Think about what the internet was like 'early on'. It was
nothing like it is today.. and fidonet is nothing like it was then in the
early days of internet connectivity either.  Now generally people can have
direct connections via dsl, cable, etc. and stay online 24/7.

In one of our early setups with the internet, we had a connection, but were
initially only allowed to connect to this particular system "after
business hours" (this was nicernet.org).  They allowed us to log in,
send them a list of files we wanted, then later that evening, pick up the
files haha.. that was fun at the time, but not very useful fidonet-wise.  I
established a domain for the PDN on nicernet then, but it was essentially
'useless'.

> -> As for supporting what you've written, if you're in it for the money
> -> with your software, forget it.


> Yes, the BBS shareware gold mine played out a long time ago.

There are still good packages out there that are shareware, Trifle..
BBBS/li (BBBS for linux) is a shareware package that I run here. True, it
was really the only well developed fidonet-compatible software that was
available when I switched from OS/2 to Linux, but it's a great package and
it's still being updated.

While some people shudder at the idea of running someone elses's compiled
bbs code on their linux box, I've never had that kind of problem with
running BBBS. The author keeps the code up to date (he just sent me another
beta this week) and he's a great programmer.. so security issues aren't a
question.

> -> As the author of the Cheepware line, I write my BBS doors and
> -> utilities for myself, primarily.  I release them as freeware to the
> -> BBS scene in the hopes someone will find my programs as useful as I
> -> have.

> Do you provide source code?  I don't see the point of "free" without
> source code.

There are sometimes good reasons for not providing source, even in the bbs
door world.  An author may not want various trunks of his works out there..
It's up to him or her.  I can deal with that.  Sean's doors aren't written
for Linux at this time, AFAIK.. that makes a difference as well.

Take care,
Janis

--- BBBS/Li6 v4.10 Dada-1