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After ~25 years of running Citadel (first as a Citadel:K2NE and then, later until now, Citadel/UX), it is time to call it a day.
For many years, now, we've acted as a network hub and, for the most part, a private node for myself. We would occasionally get a few
visitors, but for the most part, there really isn't much of a userbase and other than networking with Uncensored!, we don't pass any
network traffic to any other nodes, anymore.
So, with that, as of midnight, January 20, we will go gentle into that good night.
So long, everyone...and thanks for all the fish.
What Aahz said. There is plenty of fishiness happening here and we'd miss you if you disappeared. ;-)
No worries...I'll stick around here.
Where else can I get my regular dose of snarkiness...other than my own, that is?
The idea of networked rooms in its current form has, I think, become as antiquated as the idea of a dialup BBS. I don't think anyone is doing it anymore, and I'm going to remove that functionality from Citadel entirely. It's one of those things that adds a lot of complexity to the program without a lot of benefit. Eventually we'll put together a way for sites to do two-way syndication using standard protocols (something involving RSS or NNTP) and that opens up a lot of new possibilities.
Awww...man. I am installing Citadel again literally because I wanted to replicate groups again. lol.
I have terrible timing. Although, it has been 12 years since I wrote this (sorry, it's pay-walled, not my call): http://www.linuxpromagazine.com/Issues/2006/73/Citadel/(kategorie)/0
- jon
Mon Jan 22 2018 09:23:20 EST from IGnatius T Foobar @ UncensoredAlthough I already said it in the other room, ditto that same sentiment: the Dog Pound may be going, but Freakdog needs to stay.
The idea of networked rooms in its current form has, I think, become as antiquated as the idea of a dialup BBS. I don't think anyone is doing it anymore, and I'm going to remove that functionality from Citadel entirely. It's one of those things that adds a lot of complexity to the program without a lot of benefit. Eventually we'll put together a way for sites to do two-way syndication using standard protocols (something involving RSS or NNTP) and that opens up a lot of new possibilities.
Hi Jon! Nice to see you again.
I think we'll probably have this functionality again someday, but it won't take the same form. You might even be able to do it today using bidirectional RSS (I haven't tried it though). Or we might do NNTP if we want to go really old-skool. :)
The problem with Citadel's old site-to-site networking scheme is that it had become a very big maintenance workload for a function that no one was using. We were able to shed thousands of lines of code, while making the remaining code cleaner, easier to read, and more secure. I'm sorry to hear that the code we removed would have been useful to you.
This year marks the 20 year anniversary of the year we decided Citadel was going to be an "Exchange killer". Things have changed a lot since then. We found a sweet spot somewhere in between a groupware and a content management system, and people really seem to love it. So it makes sense that we'll enhance our syndication capabilities beyond just serving and fetching RSS eventually.
Thanks!
On the most recent episode of my podcast (the JaK Attack!) I talked about the articles I had written for various Linux mags over the years and of course, Citadel is among them. That got me fired up about using it again and I am really happy to find it is still maintained.
I once wrote a series of brutally hacky scripts to support directional Fidonet echoes in and out of Simple Machines forum. I wonder if I remember any of that and if it is on any interest here....hmmm...let met see what I can recall.
Mon Jul 09 2018 10:19:30 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar @ UncensoredHi Jon! Nice to see you again.
I think we'll probably have this functionality again someday, but it won't take the same form. You might even be able to do it today using bidirectional RSS (I haven't tried it though). Or we might do NNTP if we want to go really old-skool. :)
The problem with Citadel's old site-to-site networking scheme is that it had become a very big maintenance workload for a function that no one was using. We were able to shed thousands of lines of code, while making the remaining code cleaner, easier to read, and more secure. I'm sorry to hear that the code we removed would have been useful to you.
This year marks the 20 year anniversary of the year we decided Citadel was going to be an "Exchange killer". Things have changed a lot since then. We found a sweet spot somewhere in between a groupware and a content management system, and people really seem to love it. So it makes sense that we'll enhance our syndication capabilities beyond just serving and fetching RSS eventually.
RIP Vince
I liked him, too - cascadeBBS was the only other citadel i ever visited, and VInce was always very kind and a very cool guy, i thought.
Count me as another voice who'd love to see NNTP reimplemented. Anything that can keep Usenet going without "Google Groups" is a good thing,
If only I knew how... :)
It seems that the "bbs100" kinda-sorta-clone of Citadel has ceased development as of May 2018. This by itself wouldn't be a surprise, since our Citadel is really the only one that has kept up with the times; really, if you don't have a web interface it's hard to exist in the 21st century. But that's not what the developer cited as his reason for ending the project:
[...]
The times have caught up on bbs100. The problem is that since May 2018
laws surrounding the handling of personal data and offering online services
have become strict enough that it is no longer possible to run a simple
online service such as bbs100 without breaking the law.
[...]
Such as it is, bbs100 is not in compliance with regulations, meaning that
by hosting a bbs100 service as it was originally intended you will be
breaking the law and risking a tremendously high fine.
[...]
I've only copied the most interesting bits; if you want to read the whole thing, it's at http://www.heiho.net/bbs100/index.html
So the obvious question is: what does Walter believe is illegal about operating a BBS? As far as I can tell, bbs100 never retained any personal information other than your name and password, and of course the decision about whether to "do illegal stuff" on a BBS is up to the site operator, not to the developer of the code.
I can only think of two possibilities:
1. Since www.heiho.net is in the Netherlands, maybe it's something to do with the GDPR?
2. I-call-bullshit and he just didn't feel like keeping up the project anymore, and made an excuse? (No new versions sincec 2015)
Are we missing anything? I can't think of anything that would make operating a BBS illegal that wouldn't also impact pretty much every blog and web forum in the world.