Pubnixes

This is my landing page for information and links about pubnixes.

Matters are complicated by the significant overlap between pubnixes, gopher and other areas of interest.

Definitions

I take a "broad" definition of pubnix, to include any big remotely accessible UNIX/Linux machine which permits shell access for users beyond a single household, employer or family. A "narrow" definition of pubnix would restrict that by imposing some of the following conditions:

non-commercial or non-profit organisational setup
not charging users for access
not limiting users to a particular sub-population (e.g., members of some particular wider community)

In the late 1990s, some friends and I were involved in founding some pubnixes, in a contested context. It meant we needed to put some thought into the actual theory of what pubnixes are and why they're good. The broad/narrow typology above cuts across that. I'll write more on it one day.

There is also a concept of "micro-pubnix" (and "subverse"), adumbrated in some of the articles linked below.

Some links

The SRCF

The Tildeverse history

cmccabe on the history and future of pubnixes

Grex governance

Pubnix History

Small Internet Manifesto

Manifestos R Us

Orphans of Netscape I

Orphans of Netscape II

Generations

The Mare Serenitatis Circumlunar Corporate Republic

Live off the Land

Micropubnixes

The term "micropubnix" connotes a newer style of pubnix which is intentionally limited to a specified number of people, e.g. 48 users.

How we should grow (maybe the first proposal of limited numbers)

On SDF, and the future of public access unix

The Zen of Pubnix

Micro-pubnixes, local flavour and two-tier structure

About the small internet

Five years a sundog - Happy birthday, circumlunar space!

Pubnix as an Ecosystem

There is no FOMO on the small internet

Distilling the Zen of Pubnix

Specific pubnix sites

The circumlunar subverse

The Circumlunar Universe (according to the Zaibatsu)

The Circumlunar Universe (according to the Soviet)

The Mare Crisium Soviet Socialist Regency

Happy Birfday, Zaibatsu-kun! Or, Wages of the Smolnet

The tilde subverse

The Tildeverse

My own pubnixes

Zeus (RIP: 1998-2016)

SRCF (1999-)

Qwghlm Association (2000-)

The new pubnix project

Unsorted links

Hacker News thread re SDF / pubnixes (1)

Hacker News thread re SDF / pubnixes (2)

cmccabe on Online communities

What were the major public access unix systems available in the 1990s

https://web.archive.org/web/20230930155115/https://crystallabs.io/member/

C McCabe repo on pubnixhist

Pubnix governance

TBD

unincorporated vs incorporated
who grants root access?
do users have to be members of the organisation?
BDFL vs commercial vs oligarchy vs democracy
do all members/users get a vote?

Coda

I tend to call them "Public Access UNIX" systems, or PAX. This is definitely what some people called them in the 1990s. The "pubnix" term was new to me when I came across it a few years ago, circa 2020.