brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) (03/15/89)
(This discussion belongs in news.misc) Many people recently have talked about something they call the "Spirit of Usenet." What does this mean, other than, "The way I think USENET should be run"? Some talk as though there are some stone tablets in a golden ark that describe the spirit of usenet. Some have picked a philosophical principle which they feel should guide not just their own actions, but the actions of everybody else on the network. But the Spirit of Usenet is not what Denninger says it is, not what Crawford says it is and not even what I say it is. The spirit of usenet is, quite simply, what usenet readers and site admins wish to read, transmit and pay for. How do you learn just what that is? You watch, you talk, you survey. If there's no precedent, you *act* and see whether people like it or not. This is how the "spirit of usenet" develops. I have observed this net for a very long time. I was on my first arpanet digest mailing list before there even was a usenet. I started reading news with A news before there even was a B news. That experience tells me certain things, and they are my opinions of the spirit of usenet. First of all, the net is not a commune. People own and control property, both physical and intellectual. This comes from outside the net, not within it. Because the net is subject to outside rules it is also not an anarchy, not strictly speaking. It is a propertarian minarchy, to get technical. People often write that commercial use of usenet is against the spirit of usenet. They haven't watched the net. The real rule, I think, is that commercial *abuse* of usenet is what people don't want. In general what this means is that commercial traffic is accepted, even encouraged, when it's a win/win situation -- where netters and vendors benefit. There is nothing wrong with mutual profit, and I'm surprised that I have to say this in the western world. The proof of this is everwhere. Comp.newprod is both advertising and news -- win/win. Software support from vendors like MKS, SCO, Microport, Telebit, Telenet, Microsoft, Sun, Apple, Atari, Commodore and many others benefits both those companies and the readers -- win/win. The OtherRealms fanzine gets submissions and promotion and usenauts read it for free. A book of net material gets announced that netters clearly enjoy and demand -- they spent their money on it, not just their words. The examples are countless. If net readers want it, it's in the spirit of usenet. To run a stream of ads for something net people aren't interested it -- that would be abuse. To post a 1 meg demo people aren't interested in, that would be abuse. Is shareware abuse? Not if people want it. People can even FTP shareware from sites on the highly regulated MILNET -- the net people take as their model of non-commercial operation. Usenet is built by people who *do*, not by people who argue endlessly about undoing. In this case, I was going to do something fairly new. So I asked netters to give me their opinions. They did, and they were overwhelmingly in favour. I tried to guage the spirit of usenet not by dictating what I think it is, but by trying to find out what it is. Those who dictate what others should do are the ones violating the spirit of usenet -- that much I do know. -- Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473