Circumlunar updates

The sundog population at circumlunar.space continues to grow at a

very healthy rate. A warm welcome to dmj, losthalo, nonlinear and

visiblink. I am so happy with the wonderful range of content that

people are choosing to share at the Zaibatsu. Just check out dozens'

rabbit hole[1] of fascinating textual excerpts. Visiblink has had an

account for, what, five days now, and has already written a really

handy guide[2] to using sftp to manage your gopherspace. Great stuff.

And even greater stuff is to come. "Circumlunar space" is no longer a

single-server affair, but is transitioning to what I am calling, for

now[3], a "federation of independently administered but interconnected

unix servers", where I and others will be trying to put into practice

some of the ideas which are floating around the phlogosphere right now

about new approaches to public access unix.

The first new entity to appear in the circumlunar universe is the Red

Consensus[4], run by tfurrows. It is a "circumlunar outpost", a

small, experimental side-project run by a sundog, of uncertain

reliability and duration. At the Red Consensus, you can administer an

anonymous gopherhole without needing a shell or sftp account, using a

program tfurrows wrote in Commodore BASIC. How awesome is that?

Hopefully beore the end of this year, a new "circumlunar colony" will

appear - a long-term, stable project designed to support a substantial

userbase, like the Zaibatsu. The Mare Serenitatis Circumlunar

Corporate Republic will be a shell and gopher host, possibly more,

administered by slugmax. While I hold some degree of power over the

entire circumlunar universe, by virtue of handing out hostname within

the domain, I will not accept any significant administrative powers at

any of the other servers, as this would be against the spirit of

decentralisation and resilience. However, slugmax and I will be

working together very closely to ensure as seamless as possible a

sense of connectedness between the Zaibatsu and the Republic. Users

on one will be able to interact with users on the other via BBS,

email, IRC and perhaps more.

The connectedness and cooperation between the colonies will be simliar

to, and is inspired by, the relationship between the servers in the

Tildeverse[5]. Will the Circumlunar Universe and Tildeverse become

connected in any significant way in the future? Maybe, I don't know,

but I for one am open the idea. I am utterly entranced by this idea

of a self-organising, ever-changing fractal network of social unix

servers, with networks forming and disolving between servers and

between networks themselves as users see fit. How exciting!

Finally - if you have a shell account at the Zaibatsu but you haven't

logged in for a long time because when you first got access you

weren't terribly impressed at a tiny proto-BBS with three people

talking about how great their tiny proto-BBS was, can I politely ask

you to give it another try? There are now eleven people with shell

access, but as you've come in one by one over several months, things

have remained quiet. Let's all get on at once and have some parties!

Remember that anybody can begin a new board on the BBS, so if you're

not interested in cycling for some strange reason, just come and talk

about what you are interested in! You may well not be the only one

of us!

[1] gopher://circumlunar.space:70/1/~dozens/

[2] gopher://circumlunar.space:70/0/~visiblink/misc/phlogguide

[3] gopher://circumlunar.space:70/1/universe

[4] gopher://consensus.circumlunar.space:70/1

[5] https://tildeverse.org/