Official Circumlunar Space FAQ ------------------------------ Q1. What is Circumlunar Space? Circumlunar Space is a confederation of independently administered but tightly interconnected public access unix servers, with a special emphasis on gopher hosting; plus some related side-projets. Breaking this down a bit: * CS contains public access unix, or "pubnix", servers. These are the same kind of thing as SDF, Grex, the various "tilde" servers, and many others. * These servers are interconnected, via e.g. a BBS where posts are synchronised across all servers, and an IRC network. Users on two different CS servers are less isolated than, say, users on SDF are from users on Grex. * These servers are independently administered: nobody who has root access to one server has root access to any other server. * These servers are a confederation: they are united for purposes of common action, but each remains an independent "soverign" entity and there is no strong central authority. The whole thing holds together via voluntary cooperation. * The primary public face of these servers is not in webspace, but gopherspace. Gopher is a minimalistic information-sharing protocol which came before HTTP and prioritises plain text. It is very simple, and beautiful by virtue of this. Q2. Is Circumlunar Space the first ever "pubnix union"? Nope! The fine folks of the Tildeverse (tildeverse.org) did this first, and provided a lot of inspiration for the development of circumlunar space. It might be the first one to make such a big deal about gopher, though. Q3. How many pubnix servers are there in circumlunar space? Currently there are three: * The Mare Tranquillitatis People's Circumlunar Zaibatsu, which is more often known simply as "The Zaibatsu", is administered by Solderpunk and has the hostname zaibatsu.circumlunar.space (also reachable at z.circumlunar.space for convenience). * The Mare Serenitatis Circumlunar Corporate Republic, which is more often known simply as "The Republic", is administered by Slugmax and has the hostname republic.circumlunar.space (also reachable at r.circumlunar.space for convenience). * The Mare Crisium Soviet Socialist Regency, which is more often known simply as "The Soviet", is administered by Katolaz and has the hostname soviet.circumlunar.space (also reachable at s.circumlunar.space for convenience). Q4. What the heck is with those names? The names of the servers, and a lot of other things in circumlunar space, are borrowed from the 1985 science fiction novel Schismatrix, by Bruce Sterling, which you should definitely read. Bruce, if you're reading this, please don't sue us! You can have an account on any server you like. :) Q5. What other weird names do you use, then? Users of circumlunar space pubnix servers are called "sundogs", which in the Schismatrix universe is a slang term for a kind of live-by-wits, nomadic, vagabond underclass. Our pubnix servers are called "colonies", in order to distinguish them from our other servers, which are called "outposts" (see Q11). Q6. What makes the pubnix servers in circumlunar space special? Perhaps the most unusual thing, if you're comparing them to all the other pubnix servers out there, is that circumlunar colonies do not grow without limit. Rather, each colony has a fixed maximum number of active users. When a colony reaches capacity, a new colony is created and new users are directed towards it. The Republic was established once the Zaibatsu became home to 32 sundogs, and the Soviet was established once the Republic became home to 64 sundogs. The current plan is for the Soviet to accept a total of 48 sundogs. Q7. What will happen when the Soviet reaches 48 users? Will a fourth colony be created? There are currently no plans for a fourth colony, but we'll see what the future holds. Q8. What is the point of limiting colony user counts? Keeping the colonies small serves several purposes: A small userbase places only a small load on the server, especially as timezone differences make it unlikely that everybody is logged in at the same time. Small server loads make cheap VPSes, single board computers and "obsolete" PCs perfectly viable pubnix servers. This makes server operation viable for a wider range of people. More importantly, small communities where everybody knows everybody else have very different social dynamics from huge communities with hundreds or thousands of users, who inevitably form disconnected cliques. Keeping communities small encourages civillity and cooperation, and makes it easier to build consensus around how the community should behave. Finally, small colonies mean that even a medium-sized overall community will necessarily be spread over multiple servers, which is a good thing. Q9. Why is spreading the community over multiple servers a good thing? Putting all your eggs in one basket is never a good idea. A distributed community is a resilient community. If users are spread out over multiple, independently administered servers, then only a subset of users will be effected in the event of: * Server downtime * Server data loss * Admin illness or death * Abuse of admin power Spreading the community over multiple servers also allows for greater diversity. Some of this diversity might be technical. For example, the Zaibatsu runs GNU/Linux while the Republic runs FreeBSD and the Soviet runs OpenBSD. Using different operating systems on different colonies gives choice to users with different preferences, and also encourages software written by sundogs (see Q12) to be made easily portable across systems, which is a good trait for software to have. Other diversity might be in administrative policies. Q10. Will there be a limit to how many colonies are created? The current plan is to limit the total number of sundogs to around 150 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number), which probably means three or four colonies in total, depending on how many users individual admins decide to accept. Certainly no more than five. Q11. You said something about side projects? In addition to colonies, circumlunar space contains so-called "outposts", which are non-shell servers operated by sundogs. Outposts offer various additional services to the circumlunar community, beyond what the colonies offer, such as XMPP chat, webspace, or alternative gopherspaces with new and unusual means of management. If you're a sundog with an idea for a new outpost, please get in touch with solderpunk. Q12. You said something about writing software? A central tenet of circumlunar space is that the software which makes the colonies interesting and fun places to spend time should be written by the users, for the users, and should be openly shared with other pubnixes. This is a strong contrast with SDF, where much of the core user experience is provided by proprietary software like BBOARD and COM. See gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space:70/1/software for software developed so far. Q13. Is Circumlunar Space a totally closed-off "walled garden", like Compuserve and similar services from the early internet? Not quite! Some things, like our BBS and IRC network, are not accessible from the outside world. However, the circumlunar colonies exchange email with, and allow outgoing SSH connections to, a small number of other pubnix communities. Thus, we are not quite an isolated cloister, but also not wide open to the world. Q14. Who is in charge of circumlunar space? In principle, nobody is in charge of the entire thing, and that's by design. The colonies, and for the most part the outposts, are independently administered. No server admin can force any other server admin to do anything they don't want to, and nobody has the power to shut the whole thing down. In practice, solderpunk owns the circumlunar.space domain name, and therefore has some kind of overall power in deciding whose hosts get to be colonies and outposts. He promises not to be a jerk about it, though. 1.15 A hypothetical future FAQ: I want to join circumlunar space, but all the colonies are full and no more will be created because the magic limit of 150 sundogs has been reached! What do?! Setup your *own* confederation of independently administered but tightly interconnected public access unix servers! Or find somebody else who has, and join it. We'll happily exchange email with you, at the very least. Do some things like circumlunar space, but do other things differently! There is no need for everybody on the internet to belong to the one same big "thing". Blaze your own trail. Make new friends and learn new lessons doing it. Leave your own mark on the Small Internet.