Volume 2, Number 39 11 November 1985 +----------------------------------------------------------+ | _ | | / \ | | - Fidonews - /|oo \ | | (_| /_) | | Fido and Fidonet _`@/_ \ _ | | Users Group | | \ \\ | | Newsletter | (*) | \ )) | | ______ |__U__| / \// | | / FIDO \ _//|| _\ / | | (________) (_/(_|(____/ | | (jm) | +----------------------------------------------------------+ Publisher: Fido 1/1 Editor in Chief: Thom Henderson Review Editor: Matt Kanter Chief Procrastinator Emeritus: Tom Jennings Fidonews is published weekly by SEAboard, Fido 1/1. You are encouraged to submit articles for publication in Fidonews. Article submission standards are contained in the file FIDONEWS.DOC, available from Fido 1/1. Disclaimer or don't-blame-us: The contents of the articles contained here are not our responsibility, nor do we necessarily agree with them; everything here is subject to debate. We publish EVERYTHING received. Table of Contents 1. EDITORIAL Future Directions 2. NEWS Tom Jennings responds to Paula Giese A Request to Writers of Online Documentation Files Maple's Freeware Directory Exploited? Me? FidoGrams and Packet Radio 3. COLUMNS FidoNet Route Files Explained, Part 2 4. WANTED FIDONET info requested 5. NOTICES The Interrupt Stack New Board Announcement ============================================================ EDITORIAL ============================================================ Future Directions So what's it going to be then, eh? Where do we go from here? We have this lovely network, with hundreds or thousands of people tied together all over the world, and what are we going to do with it? Well, as a software developer, I can see all sorts of nice things we could do. Most of them involve changing the Fidonet spec, which would be difficult to do now, and even harder in the future. I don't know if you've been watching such things, or even if you care, but we are now down to two bits left in message attributes. There's not a whole heck of alot you can do with two bits. Also we now have three different systems (four, by some accounts) that are all sharing the same spec, and rumors of more to come. Of course, all of this is really only concerned with the physical specs of how the net operates. A friend of mine frequently accuses me of "featuritis". In truth, I can't offhand think of much to add that would be worth the pain of conversion. But I also don't claim to have cornered the market on bright ideas. A bigger question regards where the net is going overall. Our European friends want to extend the multinet idea to encompass different countries, and I can understand their viewpoint. I can also see that extending it down to "subnodes" might be useful. This really introduces up to four levels of the net, which may be a bit excessive. But seriously, where are we going to be in four or five years? I've heard the opinion expressed (by someone whose opinion I value) that this too shall pass, and Fidonet as we know it is really only good for a couple of years; after that we will all be using something else. But what will that "something else" grow out of? I truly feel that anything which replaces Fidonet will and must have its roots in Fidonet. It may also grow partially from other nets, such as Usenet, but it will predominatly be a child of Fidonet. We've done an incredible thing here. We've gotten thousands of people together in an amateur electronic mail network the likes of which noone (not even its creator) ever imagined. Its successor, whatever it may be, must of necessity partake of many of its qualities. We are making history here, like it or not. ------------------------------------------------------------ Fidonews Page 2 11 Nov 1985 ============================================================ NEWS ============================================================ Tom Jennings Fido 125/1 6 November, 85 This is in response to Paula Giese's article in newsletter 238, about "stolen" Fido. The article is a good one, and you can generalize "Fido" or whatever to be any useable so-called "Public Domain" program; you probably have seen the articles in Infoworld and others about "Corporate world discovers ShareWare". I wish they hadn't found it, it wasn't lost, for them to find in the first place! Shareware was meant for turkeys like you and I, for fun and games, not to save your employer money. Corporate use of shareware is a perversion of most authors' intent. I am not going to elaborate on this further, however, it's covered elsewhere, and I just don't have the time at this moment. I am considering making my future program too silly to be useful for corporate use, wierd messages, funny prompts, etc. There are some problems with the article as it stands also. First, the policy fo Fido Software (me!) has changed in the last year or two. Fido's previous to version 11 were actually "public domain". I even said so. WHAT A STUPID THING! NEVER say "public domain"! You have NO rights to your software if you do. Let others use it, fine, but you want to have rights to it ultimately. The policy was "make as many copies as you need". Period. I later changed this to "if you have a small number of systems, copy it. If you need lots of copies, contact me". It was still public domain. Still stupid. The current versions are different. The policy probably won't change in substance again. No longer is Fido public domain; the policy (below) is very clear, and allows free, unlimited use in most cases. Also I have to cover some specific points in Paula's article. First, Southwestern Bell has had a Fido since way back when there were less than 20 nodes, and possibly pre- FidoNet. I was pleased to have ANY one use the crummy thing. They are "grandfather claused" in any case, and have it with my blessings. (I assume that they have a system or two, being used internally.) There are many other large corporations that are also grandfathered or have paid for Fido. Fidonews Page 3 11 Nov 1985 As an aside, I doubt that the people running the Fido for S.W. Bell are the ones who screwed the kid who was hit with the tariff. All S.W. Bell employees are not interchangeable, same as any other company. The perpetrators of that stupid policy are not the ones you get to talk to on the phone, they are old dinosaurs in some office building somewhere, who, under U.S. law, are not responsible for their actions, and want to make your life as miserable as theirs. Look, in general, I'm just not going to lose any sleep, nor get myself an ulcer, worrying about "stolen programs". Unlike Lotus (may they rot in Hell) I do not universally consider not-paid-for programs "lost income". "Not paid for" is not the same as "lost money". It's a long, complicated subject that I won't elaborate on here, but if you were around in early CP/M days, you will recall the flap about WordStar. "Stolen" WordStar made them more money than any amount of advertising; for example, I worked for a large research laboratory; I "stole" WS.COM, everyone ran it and loved it, and the lab bought 10 copies the next week! (Well, it took 3 months to procure anything, that was the original problem ...) There are however many instances that just piss me off. The GTE thing for instance. Blatant theivery. They did pay for it eventually, I think; it was a GTE employee who mailed me a personal check, not a GTE check. He said it was for GTE, so I didn't argue. The current Fido Software policy is exactly as follows: "Fido Software provides the Fido/FidoNet software (Fido) both to the Bulletin Board community at large as a public service, and to all other users as a commercial product, available for a fee. "Fido can be used without charge only if the software is used to provide a publicly available, publicly accessible system open to anyone. Restrictions such as subscriptions may be used, but anyone still must be eligible to use it. "All other uses of Fido are considered to be private or commercial, and a copy of Fido system must be purchased from Fido Software for each computer system. The purchase allows you to get updated software as versions come out, and a printed manual. Financial support from corporations and other institutions ensures that Fido will continue to be maintained and updated. If you have large scale or special requirements, simple arrangements can be made. Fidonews Page 4 11 Nov 1985 "The intent of this policy is simple and fairly clear; Fido is intended as a gesture of goodwill towards the Bulletin Board community first, and other, commercial and private uses fund maintenaince and further development. This policy is no different than donating products or services to a school or other institution as a gesture of goodwill. " I think this is pretty clear and straightforward. I don't care if you charge for access to your board. I don't care if you are a fascist and run your BBS like a prison ship. I just don't care. As long as it's a public access BBS, I don't care. (If you wanna juggle definitions to make it fit I still don't care!) If you are selling Fido, or using it to run a business, and you haven't paid for it, then I do care. Please mail money. If the phone number is a secret, then no way it's a publically accessible board, buy the goddamn thing, you get updates cheap. I do not use *any* stolen programs in my work as an employee nor for Fido Software. None, zippo. Please don't ask me to clarify specific installations, or try to explain why your case is different than any other, use your own judgement. What I don't know doesn't hurt me (so they say), and there is nothing I can do about it anyways. Like I said before, it's not really that big an issue, just "follow your heart" and you will know what it is you should do ... ------------------------------------------------------------ Fidonews Page 5 11 Nov 1985 A Request to Writers of Online Documentation Files by Bdale Garbee, sysop 129/13, the L5Net Gateway I have a real problem. It's a fairly serious problem, but a fairly stupid one too... Many of the documents describing Fido, Fidonet, and many interesting utilities make too many assumptions about printer capabilities. Particularly this very newsletter, and the latest release of the Fido documentation... [sigh]. Overstriking and underlining just don't belong in documents that are going to be printed on a wide variety of printers. Everyone's machines do it differently, and the backspaces or bare carriage returns create havoc on laser printers and the like. The other big problem with lots of current online documentation is that it does not use formfeeds, and assumes 66 lines per page. What if I want to run my printer at 8 lines/inch, and still use 11 inch paper? Or even more reasonably, what if I want to use a laser printer that inserts pagebreaks at 60 lines? The Arpanet Network Information Center people solved this problem ages ago, and in a VERY simple way. I would like to propose that all users of Fidonet adopt the standard specified in Arpa RFC 825, from which I quote: "The following rules are established for the format of RFCs: The character codes are ASCII. Each page must be limited to 58 lines followed by a form feed on a line by itself. Each line must be limited to 72 characters followed by a carriage return and line feed. No overstriking (or underlining) is allowed. These "height" and "width" constraints include any headers, footers, page numbers, or left side indenting." Tear this page out of the newsletter and post it on the wall beside your word processor, PLEASE! If you really think you need to boldface something, or underline something, think about using all caps, or making better use of whitespace. The thousands of frustrated people with printers that don't work exactly like yours will thank you over and over again... The only conceivable problem I can see is for those people with printers that don't handle formfeeds... like LA36's, etc. But then, everyone I know with a printer like that has a program to fake formfeed capability anyway. Fidonews Page 6 11 Nov 1985 I'm working on hacking FIDO.PRN and some of the other primary fidonet documentation to meet these specificiations. If anyone else is interested in copies of the files when I'm done, send me a note... [Editor's note: An interesting point. I confess it never occurred to me to doubt the 66 lines/page "standard", despite having once owned a 51 lines/page terminal. Can we get some more feedback on this?] ------------------------------------------------------------ Fidonews Page 7 11 Nov 1985 Maple's Freeware Directory Maple's Freeware Directory provides a free service to software authors to help them popularize their programs. The freeware, also known as shareware, is a concept that allows free evaluation of the program by the user before purchase. If the software is found to be usefull and satisfactory a small donation to the author is suggested. In some cases upon receiving this donation the authors will send a manual. The programs are not copy protected and their copying and sharing is in fact welcomed. This concept provides the user with commercial quality software for a fraction of commercial software price. Therefore, not only are the users treated as responsible individuals but they are not expected to pay for the copy protection schemes they do not want in the first place. The authors, on the other hand, devote all of their creativity to the program itself, instead of trying to "protect" it from the purchaser. To assist both the authors and users Maple's Freeware Directory is compiling a comprehensive catalog of available freeware. In order to have their programs listed in the directory the authors are invited to contact us for a copy of our questionnaire. Editor Maple's Freeware Directory Box 23, Station M Calgary, T2P 2G9 Canada Also available via Fidonet node 134/1, the Calgary_Fido. ------------------------------------------------------------ Fidonews Page 8 11 Nov 1985 Chuck Lawson Fido 124/12 Exploited? Me? I am writing this in response to Paula Giese's "Ripping Off Tom Jennings And All Of Us" article in last week's FidoNews (Issue 238). I want to say, upfront, that I agree with Paula Giese that GTE (and the others mentioned) should be paying the $100 fee for Fido. I am sysop of a free, open to the public, general interest board that happens to be sponsored by, and occasionally used by, a private company, and although we fall in Tom Jennings' (and apparently Paula's) list of general interest privately owned services, we should probably be paying too. Tom has contributed a lot to the BBS community in writing and supporting Fido, and deserves some recompense for those who make money from it. I will go so far as to say that that list should probably include "paid registration" boards as well. It is a little ridiculous to condemn one group with income from a bulletin board (regardless of whether it makes money - most don't) and not the rest. My major quibble is with the idea of being "exploited" by PC Pursuit. I am a subscriber to PC Pursuit. I have users who regularly access my board via PC Pursuit. I (and the rest of the sysops in our net, Net 124) enjoy the use of "free" Fidomail to some areas (including Tom Jennings' home net, 125) via PC Pursuit. And I have not once felt exploited. Maybe I'm just unenlightened. In my humble opinion, I believe that PC Pursuit is just another carrier service, and no more (and no less) guilty of exploitation than the various companies who operate the North American phone system. Where do you draw the line of distinction? Of course PC Pursuit advertises that you can access bulletin boards in twelve cities. That's kind of the point. Would you pay your telephone bill if you didn't believe you could call other people? And BOTH parties pay for the privilage there. Offhand, that's a service, in my book, and not exploitation. Now I'm not sure about other sysops, but I' m always relatively thrilled to find my board in bulletin board lists outside the local area. After all, I put the board up for people to use, and am usually thrilled to see someone from outside our local dialing area spend their hard-earned dollars to call my board (even if they only spend $25 a month). I DO hope that they ask the sysops of the boards mentioned for permission to list them, but I have never been asked for permission to have my board listed on a BBS list, and that includes some lists that people have attempted to sell. All in all, I would like to submit a public plea for GTE to do two things - send Tom Jennings $100 (or more - they Fidonews Page 9 11 Nov 1985 certainly have gotten mileage from Fido), and ADD MORE CITIES. It is my belief that they have done as much to improve the BBS world as the advent of cheap 1200 baud modems has. I will be attempting to start a discussion of this topic on my board. It should be quite interesting, as we have a number of users who are PC Pursuit subscribers (some local who use it elsewhere, some who use it to access us), and several attorneys. I would like to invite all those with an opinion to call and express themselves, or send FidoMail to Fido 124/12. I will re-post the FidoMail msgs in the appropriate area (our BBS Ethics discussion). Chuck Lawson Sysop, Fido 124/12, The Inside Track Edition (214) 422-4772 24hrs/7days, 300/1200/2400 Accessible Via PC Pursuit / Dallas ------------------------------------------------------------ Fidonews Page 10 11 Nov 1985 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ + + + FIDOGRAMS & PACKET RADIO + + BY LUCK HURDER - 101/105 + + + +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Those of you who've read the articles on the Fidogram free telegram service in Fidonews 9/09/85 and 10/28/85 and certainly those of you who have utilized the service might be interested in knowing more about how Fidograms are being routed to their ultimate destination. Regardless of where they originate or where they are going, Fidograms are placed into a format that is familiar to the radio operators who will be handling them. This is done because in spite of the fact that there may be some automatic computer relays involved, at some point the Fidogram will eventually have to be given to a human being for delivery. Here's an example of the format we use: NR 3172 R KY1T 21 DALLAS TEX VIA EASTHAM MA NOV 1 RANDALL AND SHIRLEY JOHNSTON 111 RIDGLEA DRMIDLAND TX 79701915 682 2384BT CONGRATULATIONS ON THE ENGAGEMENT OF YOUR DAUGHTER GAIL TO RICHARD X LET ME KNOW IF I CAN HELP IN THE WEDDING BT BRONSON JOHNSTON In the event that the delivering operator had difficulty contacting the addressee, he has the option of either sending it via the U.S. Mule system, or sending it back to KY1T EASTHAM, MASS (that's me), advising of non-delivery. For those of you interested in specifics, Fidograms leave my station on a 1200 baud radio link, utilizing what we believe to be a neat rendition of the X.25 protocol, dubbed AX.25 (the "A" standing for Amateur). The Fidogram goes to a packet radio BBS (PBBS) where it is picked off by another Amateur radio operator, who sends it through our system by voice or (egads!) Morse Code. For you Sysops out there, I've been slowly getting around to sending out a file called "Fidograms.ARC" to Fidos in as many areas as possible. This is getting expensive! If you don't yet have the file, please contact me, and I'll fire it off to you, pronto. Otherwise it'll just take me some time to get to your particular Fido - if I don't run out of Fidomail credit first... For further info on this free public service, or to send your first 1 (or 100) Fidograms, contact me at 101/105. ------------------------------------------------------------ Fidonews Page 11 11 Nov 1985 ============================================================ COLUMNS ============================================================ FidoNet Route Files Explained Part 2 -- In the Beginning by Ben Baker, Fido 100/76 From the time he first began "routing" messages, Fido has used "route files" to tell him what messages to send where when. Three basic route file commands do this; SCHEDULE aka SEND-TO, ROUTE-TO and ACCEPT-FROM. This week, we'll look at these commands in depth. Before going farther, I need to define a couple of terms. A "target" is a node to which your Fido will connect and directly send a message. An "addressee" is the ultimate destination node for a message. This is an important distinction. Because of routing, the addressee and the target for a particular message are often different nodes. A "packet" is a collection of messages all to be sent to a single target (though perhaps several addressees). At the beginning of each schedule Fido builds all the packets he will be permitted to send during that schedule. Now, let's take a look at the three basic commands that may appear in a route file, and see how each of them can modify Fido's behavior. SCHEDULE or SEND-TO These commands are equivalent. They tell Fido "During this schedule, you may build packets for any target in . Include all messages to different addressees which may be routed to these targets. Do not consider any outgoing messages which cannot be sent to one of these targets." Unless there is an ACCEPT-FROM statement (see below) only messages originating on your Fido qualify to go into packets. If is empty (and this is NOT schedule A), Fido will not build any packets. If he doesn't build any packets he will not send any mail, even if he is POLLed (see next week). ROUTE-TO This command will override any node list implied routing affecting these nodes. It tells Fido "If is in and there are outgoing messages for any nodes in , put them in 's packet." If is not in you blew it. It's almost, but not quite a "no operation." No packets will be built for nodes in , even if they are in ! Don't route messages to a that's not in the for this schedule. Fidonews Page 12 11 Nov 1985 By the way, a bug in an earlier version of Fido pre- vented messages to from being sent unless he was also in . I don't know if that has been corrected, but it's still good general practice to put in . ACCEPT-FROM Normally, Fido only sends mail originating on your board. If you receive a message originating on A and addressed to B, without this statement, your Fido will not attempt to send it along to B. Instead, he will mark it "orphan" to give you an indication that he had a problem with it and otherwise ignore it. This statement in a route file tells Fido "When you build packets, if you find any messages from any nodes in , treat them as if they originated here. In other words FORWARD any messages from the nodes in that you can get into packets FOR THIS SCHEDULE's ." I actually suggested this verb for this action and have regretted it ever since! It's a misnomer. A better verb might be "FORWARD-FOR" but hindsight is always 20-20. It really means "Accept, for forwarding, only messages from these guys." It's designed to prevent you from paying someone else's phone costs without prior arrangement. So where do you put this statement? Remember two important points I've mentioned before. 1) Route files affect how you SEND mail, not how you receive it. 2) A particular route file affects only the schedule with the matching . Consider Fido 202/0, a hypothetical bi- directional host. He executes three schedules each night. During schedule B, before the national window, he collects outgoing mail from his locals. During schedule C he sends mail from himself and his locals to "the network" and receives mail for himself and his locals from it. Then in schedule D, after the national window, he distributes the mail he received for his locals. ROUTE.B needs neither a nor an ACCEPT- FROM statement. Indeed, he doesn't really need any ROUTE.B file at all because HE ISN'T SENDING ANY MAIL DURING SCHEDULE B. ROUTE.C has the national net excluding 202/0's locals in its . It also has "ACCEPT-FROM 1, 2, 3, (all locals)." Now let's say that 202/3 received a message from 125/1 last night, but it wasn't delivered because 202/3 was down. The message is still here. Won't it be "orphaned" because 125/1 isn't in the ACCEPT-FROM list? NO! Because 202/3 isn't in the , the message won't even be considered DURING THIS SCHEDULE. ROUTE.D has all the nodes in net 202 in the , and an "ACCEPT-FROM ALL" statement. Now the fore- going message will be processed correctly and forwarded to 202/3. Fidonews Page 13 11 Nov 1985 Now let's say that 100/76 tries to forward a message to Jakarta through 202/0. 202/0 cannot refuse delivery of the offending message, so there it sits in his mail area. During schedule B, he ignores all outgoing mail because he doesn't have a . During schedule C Jakarta is in his , but 100/76 is not in his , so the message is orphaned. During schedule D 100/76 IS in the , but Jakarta is not in the so the message is again ignored. Make no mistake, if Jakarta had been in the in schedule D, the message would have been sent, even though it had been marked an orphan during schedule C (provided, of course that a connection could be made and Jakarta happened to be in a mail schedule at that time). This means that if messages are orphaned because of errors in your routing files, the routing files can be corrected and the messages can still be sent. The orphan flag is NOT a dead end! A similar kind of bug existed (and may still; I don't know) with ACCEPT-FROM as with ROUTE-TO (above). If a route file contains an ACCEPT-FROM statement, make sure your own node is in the . (The first time I used this statement, I forwarded a lot of messages, but "orphaned" my own messages!) Well, that's how routing is achieved. Remember, all these statements control out-going mail. You can receive mail even if you don't have any route files! A final point on routing. If a message says it has a file attached (even if the file doesn't exist) all bets are off. Routing is suspended and the message will be sent direct from the originator to the addressee. Fido has several built-in safeguards to prevent you from forwarding someone else's files, or forwarding your files through someone else for that matter. Next week we'll take a close look at the goodies TJ has provided in version 11 and see how they are making automatic node list distribution at long last a reality. ------------------------------------------------------------ Fidonews Page 14 11 Nov 1985 ============================================================ WANTED ============================================================ From: Michael Keller Fido 19/329, 900/15 I need more information than is given in FIDOMAIL.DOC for interfacing my Model I with FidoNet. If anyone is willing to unARC the FIDO documentation and send it to me, please respond via one of the above nodes. I have a CP/M system, so if the doc files were compressed with SWEEP and/or LU.EXE, that would be fine. The only problem I have now is that there is no .ARC utility for CP/M, nor Turbo Pascal source for such. ANY help or suggestions are welcome. ------------------------------------------------------------ Fidonews Page 15 11 Nov 1985 ============================================================ NOTICES ============================================================ The Interrupt Stack 23 Nov 1985 European sysop conference -- Utrecht, The Netherlands. Contact node 3101 for details. 27 Nov 1985 Halley's Comet passes closest to Earth before perihelion. 9 Dec 1985 DECUS Anaheim. The first session (Roadmap session) of the PC Special Interest Group will meet at 11:30 in the PC Campground (Bonita Tower, Santa Cruz room). See you there... 24 Jan 1986 Voyager 2 passes Uranus. 9 Feb 1986 Halley's Comet reaches perihelion. 9 Feb 1986 Diana Overholt (109/74) has another birthday. 11 Apr 1986 Halley's Comet reaches perigee. 19 May 1986 Steve Lemke's next birthday. 24 Aug 1989 Voyager 2 passes Neptune. If you have something which you would like to see on this calendar, please send a message to Fido 1/1. ------------------------------------------------------------ FIDO-RACER, Net 11, Node 301, operating at Murray State University, Murray, KY., is open from 5:00 P.M. to 7:00 A.M. central time. Our number is (502) 762-2155. We operate at 300 and 1200 baud. We are interested in collecting information on the use of bulletin boards in higher education settings. Also, we would appreciate information being shared with us concerning the use of computers by handicapped individuals. So far, we are an open access board. SYSOP-Bill Allbritten. ------------------------------------------------------------ Fidonews Page 16 11 Nov 1985