12 Feb 21 18:34, you wrote to Nick Andre:

The FTSC could always be disbanded if it cannot serve its purpose?

Just so long as the web-site is kept up, I don't see much difference.

I have no strong opinion on whether the FTSC should still exist, but the FTSC web site's operation as a document repository has long been superceded by superiour web hosts where that is their primary purpose, like SourceForge, GitHub and GitLab.

So to save on hosting costs (and the risk of ftsc.org expiring etc) I suggest decomissioning the current FTSC web site and hosting all the FTSC documents on GitHub, and uploading a snapshot to Archive.org.

Then if anyone still wants to go to the trouble of keeping the ftsc.org domain & web site alive they can redirect web visitors to the GitHub repo instead. The Wikipedia entry for FidoNet could also point to both the GitHub repo and archive.org snapshot, since they're fairly relevant.

Hosting all the FTSC documents on GitHub would be particularly useful since it would allow anyone to write bug reports or file "issues" relating to the various FidoNet standards documents, which may help any future developers. (Or historians...)

Spoken as a former maintainer of the ftsc.org web site, several years ago. I see it's still using the same layout and colour scheme. :)

--- GoldED+/BSD 1.1.5-b20180707
* Origin: Blizzard of Ozz, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia (3:633/267)

Hi andrew!

13 Feb 2021 21:39, from andrew clarke -> All:

I have no strong opinion on whether the FTSC should still exist, but
the FTSC web site's operation as a document repository has long been superceded by superiour web hosts where that is their primary purpose, like SourceForge, GitHub and GitLab.

Uploading to archive.org is a very good idea.

Using Sourceforge is a bad idea.
Using Github or better Gitlab is a good idea IMHO.

CU, Ricsi

... Murphy's Paradox: Doing it the hard way is easier in the end.
--- GoldED+/LNX
* Origin: Those who talk don't know. Those who don't talk, know. (2:310/31)

13 Feb 21 12:20, you wrote to me:

Uploading to archive.org is a very good idea.

Using Sourceforge is a bad idea.
Using Github or better Gitlab is a good idea IMHO.

Yes, SourceForge is a mess now. Though was never that great to begin with.

Meanwhile GitHub just keeps getting better.

I've no experience with GitLab.

--- GoldED+/BSD 1.1.5-b20180707
* Origin: Blizzard of Ozz, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia (3:633/267)

13 Feb 21 21:39, I wrote to all:

So to save on hosting costs (and the risk of ftsc.org expiring etc) I suggest decomissioning the current FTSC web site and hosting all the
FTSC documents on GitHub, and uploading a snapshot to Archive.org.

I've uploaded an unofficial(*) repo here:

https://github.com/zoomosis/ftsc

(*) I am not an FTSC member

--- GoldED+/BSD 1.1.5-b20180707
* Origin: Blizzard of Ozz, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia (3:633/267)

andrew wrote (2021-02-13):

13 Feb 21 12:20, you wrote to me:

Uploading to archive.org is a very good idea.

Using Sourceforge is a bad idea.
Using Github or better Gitlab is a good idea IMHO.

Yes, SourceForge is a mess now. Though was never that great to begin with.

Meanwhile GitHub just keeps getting better.

I've no experience with GitLab.

If you compare all three, Gitlab and Github is very similar and Sourceforge the horrible mess. I'm not very deep into Gitlab or Github, but my impression is that since Microsoft bought Github they have added features to the free plan, that had only been available in the free Gitlab plan before. The biggest advantage of Gitlab is that is open source (if you really want to install it on your own server). It also has a better search. Overall I find Github a bit easier to use. They are both equally good options.

---
* Origin: . (2:280/464.47)

13 Feb 21 17:08, you wrote to me:

If you compare all three, Gitlab and Github is very similar and Sourceforge the horrible mess. I'm not very deep into Gitlab or Github, but my impression is that since Microsoft bought Github they have added features to the free plan, that had only been available in the free
Gitlab plan before. The biggest advantage of Gitlab is that is open
source (if you really want to install it on your own server). It also
has a better search. Overall I find Github a bit easier to use. They are both equally good options.

Ultimately it doesn't really matter as long as a decision is made and the repo works.

If Microsoft happens to screw up GitHub 10 years from now then that's not a huge deal for most people.

Though somehow I don't see the FTSC having much to do by 2031.

I don't really see Microsoft messing up GitHub as it would create a lot of ill-will towards open source developers, including their own employees, but in any case it's usually fairly trivial to move most smaller repos elsewhere, especially something small and relatively static like the FTSC docs. And in the unlikely event a decent free alternative is unavailable, self-hosting is an option.

--- GoldED+/BSD 1.1.5-b20180707
* Origin: Blizzard of Ozz, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia (3:633/267)

Good ${greeting_time}, andrew!

13 Feb 2021 21:39:50, you wrote to All:

The FTSC could always be disbanded if it cannot serve its purpose?

Just so long as the web-site is kept up, I don't see much
difference.

I have no strong opinion on whether the FTSC should still exist, but
the FTSC web site's operation as a document repository has long been superceded by superiour web hosts where that is their primary purpose,

The difference is only in their popularity. Obvious enough, the FTN documents are not something that consumes many resourses - there are just some requests per day served from nginx RAM cache (yes, I have plenty of memory there).

like SourceForge, GitHub and GitLab.

These are primarily the git repositories. I'd be happy to use git for all our needs several years ago (when I was a member of the FTSC), but some old farts appeared unable to learn ever more simple things than git and gpg.

So to save on hosting costs

I wouldn't go bankrupt whether I'd spend 0.01 RUB on it again. I have a number of servers with a plenty of resources, so those 17 Mb for the ${subj} are very hard to notice in a total load.

(and the risk of ftsc.org expiring etc)

This is the only real risk.

I suggest decomissioning the current FTSC web site and hosting
all the FTSC documents on GitHub, and uploading a snapshot to
Archive.org.

GitHub is distrusted (they are known to wipe whole projects due to politically "unreliable" people rarticipating there), so it could serve only as a mirror. Anyway, to do that we have to start using git, so here's a question: out of all candidates, who is familiar with it?

Then if anyone still wants to go to the trouble of keeping the
ftsc.org domain & web site alive they can redirect web visitors to
the GitHub repo instead.

Fidonet is didstributed, so should be the storage. Git seems to be a good solution, but we should avoid using any and all centralized services.

Once we had the fidonet.net domain. In order to keep people away from using it as the only source of actual connection information, we had to let it expire (some people, including me, knew all the necessary bank reqs, but nobody had paid for it) and being squatted.

Current ${subj} is a bit unfriendly to a search engines, but it's very friendly to mirroring software like wget. That's not what we could have with git, but it allows anyone to keep their own FTSC documents archive.

The Wikipedia entry for FidoNet could also point to both the
GitHub repo and archive.org snapshot, since they're fairly relevant.

Seems unwise. Keeping ftsc.org and adding some mirrors would be mush better.

Hosting all the FTSC documents on GitHub would be particularly useful since it would allow anyone to write bug reports or file "issues"
relating to the various FidoNet standards documents, which may help
any future developers. (Or historians...)

"FidoNet is our primary mode of communication" // (q)

So all reports should go here, to the FTSC_PUBLIC echoarea. Also, git can work over a netmail...

Spoken as a former maintainer of the ftsc.org web site, several years
ago.

Answering as a current hoster of it, just now :-)

I see it's still using the same layout and colour scheme. :)

I've changed (wrote new) only the documents listing engine.


--
Alexey V. Vissarionov aka Gremlin from Kremlin
gremlin.ru!gremlin; +vii-cmiii-ccxxix-lxxix-xlii

... GPG: 8832FE9FA791F7968AC96E4E909DAC45EF3B1FA8 @ hkp://keys.gnupg.net
--- /bin/vi
* Origin: ::1 (2:5020/545)

Hello Alexey!

14 Feb 21 07:27, you wrote to andrew clarke:

These are primarily the git repositories. I'd be happy to use git for
all our needs several years ago (when I was a member of the FTSC), but some old farts appeared unable to learn ever more simple things than
git and gpg.

I'm certainly open to maintaining the document library via a git repository.

So to save on hosting costs

I wouldn't go bankrupt whether I'd spend 0.01 RUB on it again. I have
a number of servers with a plenty of resources, so those 17 Mb for the ${subj} are very hard to notice in a total load.

(and the risk of ftsc.org expiring etc)

This is the only real risk.

I've got this under control; the US $16.88 per year is unlikely to bankrupt me either.

I suggest decomissioning the current FTSC web site and hosting
all the FTSC documents on GitHub, and uploading a snapshot to
Archive.org.

GitHub is distrusted (they are known to wipe whole projects due to politically "unreliable" people rarticipating there), so it could
serve only as a mirror. Anyway, to do that we have to start using git,
so here's a question: out of all candidates, who is familiar with it?

I'm not officially a candidate yet, but I am familiar with git; I use it for mbsebbs, among other things.

Then if anyone still wants to go to the trouble of keeping the
ftsc.org domain & web site alive they can redirect web visitors
to the GitHub repo instead.

Fidonet is didstributed, so should be the storage. Git seems to be a
good solution, but we should avoid using any and all centralized
services.

I don't see an issue with using something such as GitHub or GitLab; however it should not be the only archive for FTSC documents.

Once we had the fidonet.net domain. In order to keep people away from using it as the only source of actual connection information, we had
to let it expire (some people, including me, knew all the necessary
bank reqs, but nobody had paid for it) and being squatted.

Current ${subj} is a bit unfriendly to a search engines, but it's very friendly to mirroring software like wget. That's not what we could
have with git, but it allows anyone to keep their own FTSC documents archive.

True.

The Wikipedia entry for FidoNet could also point to both the
GitHub repo and archive.org snapshot, since they're fairly
relevant.

Seems unwise. Keeping ftsc.org and adding some mirrors would be mush better.

I agree that the ftsc.org site should be maintained.

Hosting all the FTSC documents on GitHub would be particularly
useful since it would allow anyone to write bug reports or file
"issues" relating to the various FidoNet standards documents,
which may help any future developers. (Or historians...)

"FidoNet is our primary mode of communication" // (q)

So all reports should go here, to the FTSC_PUBLIC echoarea. Also, git
can work over a netmail...

Agreed.

Andrew

--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20180707
* Origin: Phoenix BBS * phoenix.bnbbbs.net (1:320/219)

14 Feb 21 07:27, you wrote to me:

These are primarily the git repositories. I'd be happy to use git for
all our needs several years ago (when I was a member of the FTSC), but some old farts appeared unable to learn ever more simple things than git and gpg.

An old English phrase springs to mind: "You can't teach old dogs new tricks." :-)

GitHub is distrusted (they are known to wipe whole projects due to politically "unreliable" people rarticipating there), so it could serve only as a mirror.

"Perfect is the enemy of good" - Voltaire

I have no issue with GitHub and the likelyhood of an FTSC repo being shut down by GitHub is essentially zero, and even if it's non-zero, the point of any repo is that its users have local copies, so it can always be restored one way or another.

Anyway, to do that we have to start using git, so here's a question:
out of all candidates, who is familiar with it?

Even if not, Git takes 10 minutes to learn if you're familar with CVS or Subversion. Obviously longer if you've never used revision control software before. But I'd like to think all the nominated FTSC members have at least some knowledge of what revision control is, but who knows around here. :-)

Current ${subj} is a bit unfriendly to a search engines, but it's very friendly to mirroring software like wget. That's not what we could have with git, but it allows anyone to keep their own FTSC documents archive.

It's pretty rare anyone needs every document.

In any case "git clone xyz" will download them all, probably quicker than wget can mirror them, and you get a complete log of ever commit.

The Wikipedia entry for FidoNet could also point to both the
GitHub repo and archive.org snapshot, since they're fairly
relevant.

Seems unwise. Keeping ftsc.org and adding some mirrors would be mush better.

So keep it, but the point I was getting at is that an FTSC repo should encourage feedback, bug reports etc. GitHub (and the other sites like it) give you all that for free.

Hosting all the FTSC documents on GitHub would be particularly
useful since it would allow anyone to write bug reports or file
"issues" relating to the various FidoNet standards documents, which
may help any future developers. (Or historians...)

"FidoNet is our primary mode of communication" // (q)

So all reports should go here, to the FTSC_PUBLIC echoarea. Also, git
can work over a netmail...

The FTSC should not be in the business of restricting the discussion of its own documents to be within the bounds of FidoNet.

In any case FTSC_PUBLIC is awful for bug reports in comparison to something like GitHub.

Among other things, it:

- is not really public, or is essentially invisible to public without considerable effort
- has no archive
- has no search, so the same problems get asked
- has no way to resolve/close bug reports
- requires readers to skip non-technical posts (just like this one); particularly every single dreaded message about FTSC membership/nominations/voting/etc that are all nonsense to anyone only interested in actual technical work


Not directed at Alexey:

It used to be the technical discussions were in NET_DEV. I assume for some reason that echo died, not my connection to it. But the same questions got asked over and over there too, mostly because nobody kept a long-term record of anything except for the FTSC, who only ever published standards and never any annotations/addendums/clarifications.

Eg. a common thread was how to implement FTS-9 (MSGID/REPLY) properly since it was was so open to interpretation (and probably still is). (This is only an example, not an invitation to mansplain MSGID/REPLY to me.)

--- GoldED+/BSD 1.1.5-b20180707
* Origin: Blizzard of Ozz, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia (3:633/267)

Good ${greeting_time}, andrew!

15 Feb 2021 16:37:50, you wrote to me:

These are primarily the git repositories. I'd be happy to use git
for all our needs several years ago (when I was a member of the
FTSC), but some old farts appeared unable to learn ever more simple
things than git and gpg.

An old English phrase springs to mind: "You can't teach old dogs new tricks." :-)

So these dogs should be barking somewhere away.

GitHub is distrusted (they are known to wipe whole projects due to
politically "unreliable" people rarticipating there), so it could
serve only as a mirror.

"Perfect is the enemy of good" - Voltaire

"Nothing is perfect" (q) someone else

I have no issue with GitHub and the likelyhood of an FTSC repo being
shut down by GitHub is essentially zero, and even if it's non-zero,
the point of any repo is that its users have local copies, so it can always be restored one way or another.

Personally I dislike the very idea of using some centralized service.

Anyway, to do that we have to start using git, so here's a question:
out of all candidates, who is familiar with it?

Even if not, Git takes 10 minutes to learn if you're familar with CVS
or Subversion. Obviously longer if you've never used revision control software before.

Only for the most trivial tasks and personal use. Collaboration using git appears to be a sort of art...

But I'd like to think all the nominated FTSC members have at least
some knowledge of what revision control is, but who knows around
here. :-)

I exactly know there are some who would very likely fail doing that.

Current ${subj} is a bit unfriendly to a search engines, but it's
very friendly to mirroring software like wget. That's not what we
could have with git, but it allows anyone to keep their own FTSC
documents archive.

It's pretty rare anyone needs every document.

Yes. But the storage space is cheap, so there's a good reason to mirror everything.

In any case "git clone xyz" will download them all, probably quicker
than wget can mirror them,

No.

and you get a complete log of ever commit.

Yes, and this is the main advantage.

The Wikipedia entry for FidoNet could also point to both the
GitHub repo and archive.org snapshot, since they're fairly
relevant.

Seems unwise. Keeping ftsc.org and adding some mirrors would be
much better.

So keep it, but the point I was getting at is that an FTSC repo
should encourage feedback, bug reports etc. GitHub (and the other
sites like it) give you all that for free.

Feedback and bug reports could be published in the echoareas. Everything else may be done with git itself.

Also, the use of GitHub creates a single point of failure (for example, they would process "DMCA shutdown" requests, while I can safely trash this shit exactly as I did before with hundreds of such requests). That means even if we lose one of mirrors, there would remain other resources.

Hosting all the FTSC documents on GitHub would be particularly
useful since it would allow anyone to write bug reports or file
"issues" relating to the various FidoNet standards documents,
which may help any future developers. (Or historians...)

"FidoNet is our primary mode of communication" // (q)
So all reports should go here, to the FTSC_PUBLIC echoarea. Also,
git can work over a netmail...

The FTSC should not be in the business of restricting the discussion
of its own documents to be within the bounds of FidoNet.

The "F" in "FTSC" stays for "Fidonet".

In any case FTSC_PUBLIC is awful for bug reports in comparison to something like GitHub.

Among other things, it:
- is not really public, or is essentially invisible to public without considerable effort

One message to areafix.

- has no archive

One more message to areafix.

- has no search, so the same problems get asked

That's the task of a message reading software.

- has no way to resolve/close bug reports

The FTSC doesn't develop anything, so here should be no bug reports. Even when some documents may contain errors, they could be fixed without any bug tracking facility.

- requires readers to skip non-technical posts (just like this one)

I see you're using Golded. Have you tried pressing the "/" key while reading messages? :-)


--
Alexey V. Vissarionov aka Gremlin from Kremlin
gremlin.ru!gremlin; +vii-cmiii-ccxxix-lxxix-xlii

... :wq!
--- /bin/vi
* Origin: ::1 (2:5020/545)

Hello andrew clarke!

** On Sunday 14.02.21 - 01:27, andrew clarke wrote to All:

I've uploaded an unofficial(*) repo here:

https://github.com/zoomosis/ftsc

That is very nice! The search is wonderful. It even seems to
do boolean searches.

It found "^apath" in all 8 documents. The search @ftsc.org
found none; I had to enter "apath" without the caret to get the
a positive search.

But a nice feature of the ftsc.org search is that it lists the
titles of the documents next to the doc number in the results
list.

Can github be adjusted to do the same?

(*) I am not an FTSC member

Thanks for the initiative of the github thing.

Is there a similar (and free) thing that is designed for
managing document versions? (and not one that is designed for
code?)

--
../|ug

--- OpenXP 5.0.48
* Origin: (2:221/1.58)

15 Feb 21 13:21, you wrote to me:

I've uploaded an unofficial(*) repo here:

https://github.com/zoomosis/ftsc

That is very nice! The search is wonderful. It even seems to
do boolean searches.

Yes, "Advanced search" is great.

It found "^apath" in all 8 documents. The search @ftsc.org
found none; I had to enter "apath" without the caret to get the
a positive search.

But a nice feature of the ftsc.org search is that it lists the
titles of the documents next to the doc number in the results
list.

Can github be adjusted to do the same?

Probably not without renaming the files to include titles, which obviously isn't practical.

(*) I am not an FTSC member

Thanks for the initiative of the github thing.

Is there a similar (and free) thing that is designed for
managing document versions? (and not one that is designed for
code?)

Google Docs can do versioning but it's clunky.

Git can handle binaries but "git diff" won't show you much for non-text documents, only that a file has changed:

$ git diff
diff --git a/foobar.pdf b/foobar.pdf
index f5d671a..82ac402 100644
Binary files a/foobar.pdf and b/foobar.pdf differ

Conceivably a web site like GitHub could hook into the "diff" part to display something more useful, but a common alternative is to write your documents in MarkDown (which is basically just plain text with benefits). Then you only export to HTML/PDF when you need to. I use Pandoc for that.

Obviously Markdown is not going to work for spreadsheets or graphics. Though I'm not sure how you'd represent "diff" of a spreadsheet or a graphics file anyway. :)

--- GoldED+/BSD 1.1.5-b20180707
* Origin: Blizzard of Ozz, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia (3:633/267)