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Ärende: FidoNews 32:36 [02/07]: General Articles
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                        GENERAL ARTICLES
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       A glaring ommision in P4 that shows P4 is written
       by North Americans for North Americans.

       By Michiel van der Vlist, 2:280/5555


A long long time ago, I was sitting next to a nurse who was to be
introduced to a piece of medical equipment that I and another
collegue had designed and build. The machine was controled by a
dedicated computer based on the Motorola 6809 processor. I wrote the
manual and I was helping the nurse going through the steps. Mind you,
this was in the time that computers had not yet massively penetrated
our homes.

The first step for the nurse was to type the name of the patient.
This was no problem, but then the manual said "press enter". And so
the nurse pressed the keys for 'E', 'N', 'T','E' and 'R' in that
order.

This goes to show that what for someone embedded in the proces is so
self evident that one never even considers mentioning it in the
manual, can be problematic for someone outside the proces.

I have often stated that P4 was written by North Americans for North
Americans without consideration for the wishes and needs of other
zones. I have often been critised for that and met with denial.
Recently I was asked again what was NA centered about P4 and how it
affected other zones. I am not going to produce an exhaustive list of
what is wrong with P4, but I will focus on one issue that falls in
the category "so self evident that no one in the circle considers
even mentioning it, while it has severe impact on those outside the
circle".

Nowhere in P4 is it mentioned, but when looked at from the POV of
someone outside NA, it is perfectly clear: P4 is written for the
situation that local calls are free. It is not mentioned because
for those who wrote it this is so much a given that no one even
thinks of explicitly mentioning it.

The give-away is a glaring ommission in P4. Only to be seen for
those living in an environment where local calls are not free.
P4 is very keen on avoiding undue cost. Especially when it comes
to imposing undue cost on others. The glaring ommision is that it
says nothing about who bears the cost of getting host routed mail
from the host to the end nodes. The host has an oubligation to see
that it gets delivered, but who pays? Well nobody of course, local
calls are free aren't they?

Yes, local calls are free. In the environment where the founding
fathers lived and wrote the rules. In THAT environent it makes
perfect sense to arange nets so that there is no geographical
overlap and that they coincide with the areas of local free
calling. New nodes that reside in the area covered by a local net,
are to be listed in that net and nowhere else. New nodes not residing
in an area that is covered by a local net, are to be listed as a RIN
so that it is perfectly clear that extra cost is involved. It all
makes perfect sense in an environment where local calls are free.

Local calls are free in North America. And some other countries. But
- here it comes - not in all countries in the world, especially not
in Europe. Local calls were never free in Europe. Strict geographical
organisation makes sense when local calls are free. But when they are
not free it does not make that much sense. And so what happened
before P4? In Europe many nets were organised around people sharing
a common interest rather than a geographical area. This common
interest usually was a computer club, but it could also be something
non technical like a philosophy or whatever.

Before P4 was imposed on us, Europe had nets that were geographically
organised but there were also many overlapping nets, not geo based,
but based on a common interest. According to P4 the non geo nets had
to go.

Of course many sysops did not want to let go of "their" net and be
forced into a geonet. This was an important reason why many in
Europe were dead set against P4. Of course there were also those in
favour of enforcing regionalisation. The result was years of
fighting. In The Netherlands there was a seven year war between
competing Cost sharing organisations. In Germany there was the split
between "Classic" and "Light". The authors of P4 only looking at
their own situation and not considering the needs and wishes of
others outside North America has done a lot of damage to Fidonet as
a whole and in hindsight it is a miracle that it survived.

Of course it is all water under the bridge. Now with Fidonet over the
Internet, not only local calls are free, but ALL calls are free.
There is no more reason to fight over who carries the cost of the
calls as there isn't any. Also now that we are with so few, there is
no more reason to fight over keeping one's "Own Net". The nets based
on a common interest are long gone by lack of critical mass. Those
who can scrape together enough critical mass to have one net per
country are lucky.

I hope this answers those who asked why I say P4 was written by North
Americans for North Americans.


¸ Michiel van der Vlist, all rights reserved.
Permission to publish in the FIDONEWS file echo and the FIDONEWS
discussion echo as originating from 2:2/2

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