Subj : Re: Vibes
To   : tenser
From : boraxman
Date : Tue Jan 25 2022 23:00:00

 te> I'm genuinely curious: what do you see the advantages being?
 te> 

The disadvantages are obvious and perhaps outweight the advantages, but for me, the advantages are

1) Easy to deploy on low end hardware.  My experience is with Mystic, which
was easy to set up.  Synchronet was harder, but Matrix isn't easy either.

2) Clients are simple, in the sense that they don't need to be updated to accommodate server side changes.  The user is using a thin client.  The communication protocol is straightforward telnet or SSH.  Low barrier to creating alternative clients.

3) Extensible through door programs.  Low barrier to creating such extensions.

4) No third party at all.  It is a direct connection from the remote machine to yours.  It is totally in your control.  This isn't unique, but an advantage.  No one needs to even know it exists.

5) Persistent messaging and chat and file repository and bulletins on one place.

6) You can customize the look, leading to a shared experience which is unique.

These aren't necessarily exclusive advantages, or ones most people care for.  I'm very much in support of a peer-to-peer, open Internet, instead of the current model, where we only use the Internet to walk to walled gardens.  The internet should have been like the phone system, a system where we are all with our unique phone numbers (IP addresses), and our computers can dial into each other to get information we want to make selectively public.

.... What hair color do they put on the driver's licenses of bald men?

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/11/06 (Linux/64)
 * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)

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