cmk@sinix.UUCP (Christian Kaiser) (07/04/89)
[Sorry if the first part of this article sounds familiar to you, but I doubt that my first try (posted from my home machine) got out] I hope I can clarify some things concerning the Germany/unido/commercialism debate here. Let me first explain what I mean when I use "we" in the following context: In Germany there is a very active and loosely organized UUCP-net (called "sub-Netz") that is not registered in the official maps. It consists of about 100 sites (mostly run by individuals) that are exchanging mail and an own newsgroup hierarchy in German language since December 1987. Participation is (like in the U.S.) free; everyone can connect his machine; and in case someone is interested: it works! There is an own UUCP-map service similar to comp.mail.maps and connect- ions to similar nets in Italy and Switzerland. To organize ourselves officially (and more firmly), we have just founded an association (called "Verein zur Foerderung der privat betriebenen Datenkommunikation e.V." or short "sub-Netz e.V."). I am member of the managing board there, and I'm sending this article by order of the managing board. So much for my authority to write this. :-) Many people have offered newsfeeds to us. Big thanks to all of you! We will definitely try to get our own feed within the next few weeks. But, please allow us some time to get our organization straight first. - calling overseas costs a lot of money, and we want to be sure that we can pay the bill *before* we start - we can only work on it in our spare time - we live in places all over Germany; therefore it's difficult to get together every so often and make quick decisions. We will also apply for a domain name (we were thinking of ".sub.net") to put an end to the mail routing chaos. This will make it (hopefully) im- possible for the EUNET people to ignore our sites; all they could do is to route mail for us, that originates from within EUNET, to the U.S., ignoring the fact that it might be cheaper for their customers otherwise. Please note that there will be *nothing* illegal going on here; we are paying our telecom bills and our hardware by ourselves. The trick is that we will distribute the costs to make it cheaper for the individual (and it will be surely cheaper and less restrictive than unido's service). Please note also that we *really* don't want to betray EUNET or someone else by using resources for free. Therefore we are and have been in contact with the responsible persons at unido and are trying to work out a modus vivendi to everybody's satisfaction. Finally, some comments and questions: Someone mentioned that it is possible to lease a telephone line in the U.S. and to pay the bill from Germany. Does anyone of you know more about this? With a TB+ on cross-atlantic lines, you can be *very* happy if you get a throughput of about 800-900 cps, and the overhead time for small files (i.e. mails) is unbelievable long because you have to turn off the micro- and mini-packets to get things going. A postmaster from unido stated that no one is donating them anything. Now I would really like to know whether there is no truth in the rumor that "unido" (the machine) itself *is* a donation... :-) Yours for "..and they lived happily ever after", :-) Christian Disclaimer: The contents of this article have *absolutely nothing* to do with Siemens AG. I'm a guest here, and the reason why I'm posting on this machine is to make sure that it gets out. -- Christian Kaiser, Munich, FRG | cmk@sinix.UUCP | ..!uunet!unido!sinix!cmk