Subj : Re: SSH on BBSes
To   : tenser
From : boraxman
Date : Wed Apr 13 2022 22:43:54

 te> 
 te> If one thinks of a timesharing system as a "portal" then
 te> they are.  The point being that the exact semantics are
 te> somewhat open for interpretation.
 te> 
 te>  bo> and I wouldn't want to expose ntalkd to the internet.
 te> 
 te> You don't _have_ to.  You can just run it against localhost.
 te> You could even just use `write`.
 te> 
 te>  bo> They work great for people who can navigate unix and belong to the sa
 te>  bo> system.  This is what the public unices, like rawtext.club do.  But y
 te>  bo> are still running separate programs, whereas with a BBS, its all menu
 te>  bo> driven.
 te> 
 te> One can trivially create menu interfaces for Unix-like systems;
 te> we did this on Grex and it an ~200 line Go program.
 te> 
 te> Fixating on the captive BBS experience misses the forest for
 te> the trees.  The power and flexibility of what you get out of a
 te> timesharing system is much greater than what you get out of
 te> any BBS package.  Moreover, it can be customized by the user
 te> in a way that a BBS never can, and systems can be federated
 te> using open protocols; don't like the default message editor?
 te> No problem; just use a different one.
 te> 

Agree, I haven't seen comparable software set ups but I'm sure it can be made that way.  For me, I would prefer the Timesharing environment, but for others, they would be lost, even with an interface.  A lot of people really struggle with systems when it doesn't behave exactly as predicted.

I'd be interested to see this frontend.

--- 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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