Circumlunar updates
-------------------

The sundog population at circumlunar.space continues to grow at a
very healthy rate.  A warm welcome to dmj, losthalo, nonlinear and
visiblink.  I am so happy with the wonderful range of content that
people are choosing to share at the Zaibatsu.  Just check out dozens'
rabbit hole[1] of fascinating textual excerpts.  Visiblink has had an
account for, what, five days now, and has already written a really
handy guide[2] to using sftp to manage your gopherspace.  Great stuff.

And even greater stuff is to come.  "Circumlunar space" is no longer a
single-server affair, but is transitioning to what I am calling, for
now[3], a "federation of independently administered but interconnected
unix servers", where I and others will be trying to put into practice
some of the ideas which are floating around the phlogosphere right now
about new approaches to public access unix.

The first new entity to appear in the circumlunar universe is the Red
Consensus[4], run by tfurrows.  It is a "circumlunar outpost", a
small, experimental side-project run by a sundog, of uncertain
reliability and duration.  At the Red Consensus, you can administer an
anonymous gopherhole without needing a shell or sftp account, using a
program tfurrows wrote in Commodore BASIC.  How awesome is that?

Hopefully beore the end of this year, a new "circumlunar colony" will
appear - a long-term, stable project designed to support a substantial
userbase, like the Zaibatsu.  The Mare Serenitatis Circumlunar
Corporate Republic will be a shell and gopher host, possibly more,
administered by slugmax.  While I hold some degree of power over the
entire circumlunar universe, by virtue of handing out hostname within
the domain, I will not accept any significant administrative powers at
any of the other servers, as this would be against the spirit of
decentralisation and resilience.  However, slugmax and I will be
working together very closely to ensure as seamless as possible a
sense of connectedness between the Zaibatsu and the Republic.  Users
on one will be able to interact with users on the other via BBS,
email, IRC and perhaps more.

The connectedness and cooperation between the colonies will be simliar
to, and is inspired by, the relationship between the servers in the
Tildeverse[5].  Will the Circumlunar Universe and Tildeverse become
connected in any significant way in the future?  Maybe, I don't know,
but I for one am open the idea.  I am utterly entranced by this idea
of a self-organising, ever-changing fractal network of social unix
servers, with networks forming and disolving between servers and
between networks themselves as users see fit.  How exciting!

Finally - if you have a shell account at the Zaibatsu but you haven't
logged in for a long time because when you first got access you
weren't terribly impressed at a tiny proto-BBS with three people
talking about how great their tiny proto-BBS was, can I politely ask
you to give it another try?  There are now eleven people with shell
access, but as you've come in one by one over several months, things
have remained quiet.  Let's all get on at once and have some parties!
Remember that anybody can begin a new board on the BBS, so if you're
not interested in cycling for some strange reason, just come and talk
about what you *are* interested in!  You may well not be the only one
of us!

[1] gopher://circumlunar.space:70/1/~dozens/
[2] gopher://circumlunar.space:70/0/~visiblink/misc/phlogguide
[3] gopher://circumlunar.space:70/1/universe
[4] gopher://consensus.circumlunar.space:70/1
[5] https://tildeverse.org/