Hostname pedantry, or "GNU/Circumlunar"

This server, the one your gopher client grabbed this file from, with

IP address 167.88.113.156, is, and always has been, officially named

the Mare Tranquilitatis People's Circumlunar Zaibatsu. That's, of

course, quite a mouthful. The "correct" short way to refer to it is

as "the Zaibatsu" - that's how the characters in Schismatrix refer to

the space colony this place is named after. As of yesterday, the

canonical hostname for this server is zaibatsu.circumlunar.space.

Many people, including myself, also casually refer to this

particular server as "circumlunar space" or "CS". This is perfectly

understandable, as until quite recently it was the only machine on the

internet with the circumlunar.space domain name, and when we post

links to gopher content here, they begin with

gopher://circumlunar.space/.... But this alternative name is no

longer technically accurate, and will get less so as time goes on.

Very soon, a new public access unix server and gopherhost provider

will be brought online, administered by slugmax. It's official name

will be the Mare Serenitatis Corporate Circumlunar Republic. This is

yet another mouthful, and the "correct" short name will be "the

Republic". It's canonical hostname will be, you guessed it,

republic.circumlunar.space.

Referring to either of these individual servers as "circumlunar

space" is technically wrong, in exactly the same way that referring to

tilde.team as "the tildeverse" or to mastodon.social as "the

fediverse" is technically wrong. "circumlunar space" (or "the

circumlunar universe" if you prefer) is a many, not a one. If you say

"circumlunar space is down", you're claiming that all the servers in

the circumlunar.space domain are down simultaneously. Which hopefully

won't ever happen, that's kind of the point, or one of the points,

anyway. If you say "I have a phlog at circumlunar space", this is

not wrong, but, IMHO, slightly weird English grammar since

circumlunar space is a collective thing - I'd say "I have a phlog in

circumlunar space". Either way, it would be a bit vague, as it

wouldn't be clear which circumlunar server your phlog was at. "I have

a phlog at the Zaibatsu" or "at the Republic" is precise.

How important is any of this? Not very important at all, and I

definitely don't plan to be a jerk about it. If you "get it wrong" in

a phlog post, rest assured that I am not going to send you an

RMS-style email, interjecting for a moment to explain that what you're

referring to as "circumlunar space" is, in fact, just one individual

circumlunar server. You can be as careful or as careless as you like.

I just wanted to make it clear what the situation was and explain that

if you keep talking the way you have until now, you may soon be making

statements which are ambiguous, misleading, or just wrong. If you are

sensitive to this kind of thing, you may wish to start working on

breaking old habits now. If you don't care for pedantry, keep right

on not caring.

Two further things.

One, the Zaibatsu and the Republic are not the only entities in

circumlunar space! They are the only two "colonies", meaning they are

supposed to offer several services (at least shell and gopher) to

largeish userbases, to be around for a long time, and be

stable/reliable. They're also supposed to be interconnected in

various interesting ways that you'll learn more about in the near

future. Colonies will be added slowly, one at a time, as the most

recently added one begins to reach capacity. The Republic will be a

larger server than the Zaibatsu and be able to handle more users, so

don't expect a third colony any time soon. However, circumlunar space

also contains "outposts" - standalone experimental/hobby projects run

by individual members of colonies. They might be permanent or

temporary, and I haven't yet put any hard limits on them in place yet.

They are a way to encourage people to have fun and be creative and

learn sysadmin skills. In case you missed them, there are two

outposts so far, the Red Consensus (consensus.circumlunar.space, run

by tfurrows) and Ryumin's Dome (dome.circumlunar.space, run by yargo).

Both offer gopher hosting, but in unusual and interesting ways,

different from the colonies. In general, outposts will probably make

good testing grounds for new ideas which may later be adopted by

colonies, but they don't always have to be that.

Two, I mentioned that the canonical hostname of the Zaibatsu is now

zaibatsu.circumlunar.space, instead of plain old circumlunar.space.

This is to place the Zaibatsu on equal footing with the other servers,

especially the Republic. However, the gopherverse is already full of

links pointing to gopher://circumlunar.space:70/whatever, and I

absolutely do not want to break those links. So, the naked domain

circumlunar.space will continue to point to the Zaibatsu, forever.

This also means that any SSH configs or scripts or anything else you

have which rely on circumlunar.space being the Zaibatsu will also

continue to work. I will probably update the Gophernicus

configuration so that the automatically inserted hostname in

gophermaps is zaibatsu.circumlunar.space, and in future you should

link to your phlog using that name. I mean, it would make me happy if

you did, but I can't force you and won't try, and everything will

still work if you don't. As an exception, though (just to make things

difficult), if you want to link to this page[1], which explains and

links to the entire circumlunar universe, it would seem appropriate to

drop the "zaibatsu." and just use circumlunar.space.

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