Subj : Re: SSH on BBSes
To   : boraxman
From : tenser
Date : Wed Apr 13 2022 03:54:14

On 12 Apr 2022 at 09:52p, boraxman pondered and said...
 
 bo> The problem is they aren't all integrated in the one portal,

If one thinks of a timesharing system as a "portal" then
they are.  The point being that the exact semantics are
somewhat open for interpretation.

 bo> and I wouldn't want to expose ntalkd to the internet.

You don't _have_ to.  You can just run it against localhost.
You could even just use `write`.

 bo> They work great for people who can navigate unix and belong to the same
 bo> system.  This is what the public unices, like rawtext.club do.  But you
 bo> are still running separate programs, whereas with a BBS, its all menu
 bo> driven.

One can trivially create menu interfaces for Unix-like systems;
we did this on Grex and it an ~200 line Go program.

Fixating on the captive BBS experience misses the forest for
the trees.  The power and flexibility of what you get out of a
timesharing system is much greater than what you get out of
any BBS package.  Moreover, it can be customized by the user
in a way that a BBS never can, and systems can be federated
using open protocols; don't like the default message editor?
No problem; just use a different one.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
 * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)

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