Original Message Date: 15 Mar 92  23:03:56
From: Henk Wevers on 2:500/1
To: Tom Jennings on 1:125/111
Subj: Divs
^AINTL 1:125/111 2:500/1
Hi Tom,

  Long time no talk.

A few things.

1) I heared from Randy that you have inquired about what is going on in چ
zone
   2. a short explanation:
   - we have been organized in europe traditionally in what some people چ
call
     overlapping nets, others social nets. Not only in Holland, but in چ
other
     regions as well. This is partly my doing because when I was handling چ
the
     nodelist I allowed this (contrary to the RC's in zone 1) because I چ
rather
     had all people using fidonet technology in one nodelist in stead of
     'alternets'. For new nodes there is no problem, you either join a
     regional organized net, or join one of the club nets to your liking.
     Remember we were doing this years before we had any policy.
   - we now have a ZC (Ron Dwight) who believes that Policy 4 is the one چ
and
     only law and should be obeyed, no matter what. Eg, we should end our چ
old
     nets and reorganize.
   - some regions showed Ron the middle finger and said that the sysops in چ
the
     regions concerned would know best themselves how they would be چ
organized.
     And that no one outside their region would have any technical
     problem with the way the region was organised. (Most regions have 1
     inbound gate for mail).
   - Well, being unable to made the region and the Rc involved do what he
     wanted them to do, and because the regions did not want another Rc
     (they were content with their rc, who was doing what they wanted) Ron
     decided to remove the RC's concerned from the fidonet nodelist and
     stopped processing nodelist updates from those regions.
   - Region 28 (holland) in front as usual mailed bundles of complaints to
     the IC, who replied that he would not interfere and that Ron was right
     anyway. Policy is law, period.
   - We are now stuck at the moment, Ron has threathened to reorganize the
     nodes into other nets himself (apperently using phonenumbers) because
     he can find no-one in the regions concerned who would follow
     his 'orders'.

   So far the current state. According to Matt, the Zc only RC's can throw چ
Ron
   out of teh ZC 'job'. Also according policy and Matt and Ron, Ron چ
appoints
   the Rc's. Nice cobstruction that is....

   The only real thing I can think of now is to start our own zone nodelist
   and distribute that. As the two 'club nets' in holland take a large چ
part in
   distribution of the diffs in europe this could be done. I proposed this چ
in
   a conference as a friendly revolution and appearently made Ron really چ
mad.

   So here it is. I have not started making my own zone nodelist yet. It چ
will
   put europe in a bad shape, although lots of sysops agree with me.
   I also don't like to give in and make another 'alternet' and loose
   connections with old friends.

   Any suggestions from your side ? Any idea how to handle this ? Talking چ
does
   not help any more. As far as I know you I am sure you dislike this self
   appointed power using policy as THE law as much as I do. So this message
   really means: HEEEEEEEELP !


2) Now for the fun part. The TipTop project by Randy and me. The project چ
is a
way to stabilze echo and netmail in europe by using the Eunet (uucp)
transatlantic link in off peak hours. Randy and I (in this order) cotacted چ
the
Eunet executives and got their approval. We are in the testphase but we چ
are able
to move (echo) mail transparantly, eg seen from my system Randy's node is
located in amsterdam. We move a lot of conferences, netmail and the uucp
gatemail already. I am organizing non profit organisations in european چ
regions
to handle the costsharing for getting the (echo) into their region. One of چ
the
rules of TipTop is that a regional TipTop gate must pass every echomail
conference on the TipTop backbone to every net in the region that wants it.
There are some rules for costsharing (you know us, shareware does not work چ
very
well in europe, people try to get free rides as much as possible), but چ
basically
the idea is that it should be fair and open. I have seen remarkable results
already, exit echomail powerplay in europe. I am trying to make myself
redundant by the end of this year. If you want more info, I'll send the چ
current
docs. Oh yes, TipTop stands for Transatlantic Internet Project, Topdown
organized. The technical side is not run as a democracy, but is a top star
system to minimize dup loops risk. We will have connected the following چ
regions
next week:

  - Israel, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Austria, Italy

We are working with Switserland and Finland to get them going. Its not چ
that easy
because you need a few people to cooperate to get the mail in with bearable
costs.


Ok, 'nough said. I'll probably get the dutch sysops to send you kilo's of چ
drop
if you can help us with the zc problem. Route mail via 1:105/42 or direct. چ
(v32
bis here).


Cheers

Henk



----------------

policy4 written before ZONES EXISTED. No eur nodes then!
basic assumption behind (US) nets was "local dialing is free" doesnt
exist in eur! Negates the rationale.

ZC/RC relationship is intentionally contrived and is obviously invalid
no matter how many places its written down.