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We met on the Timex section of Compuserve on Wednesday, August 17 at 9pm to discuss SNUG. Among the 13 active participants were: Mel Nathanson (Chairman pro-tem of SNUG), Gary Lessenberry (of CATUG), Paul Holmgren (ISTUG), Sysop Dave Rothman (Compuserve), Jim Rodlin (the Boston Computer Society), Greg Popovich (of LIST) and several others. The meeting was active, and many interesting ideas were proposed. There were two primary topics:
A) The SNUG Newsletter, and
B) The SNUG Public Domain Library
At the beginning of the discussion, since we were all comfirmed modem users, it was suggested that a BBS be the central point for SNUG. But it was acknowledged that many users either cannot or will not use their modems (for whatever reason). So even as the idea to disseminate the newsletter from a BBS was proposed, it was eliminated. It was decided that any newsletter would HAVE to be in hard-copy format. It was also felt that SNUG should definitely have its own separate newsletter rather than depend on other publication (s). This would give a stronger sense of Identity on the part of the membership.
As far as the Public Domain Library went, consensus was more difficult to reach. In the beginning, once again, it was proposed that the library should be up for downloading. But this was eliminated, largely for the same reasons as the newsletter. Then, it was proposed that we continue it strictly to tape media since everyone can read tape. But the objection was raised that this would constitute a very big demand on the time of the Librarian. It was then suggested that the disk formats should also be supported. The mechanics of such a system were discussed for some time, the most prominent idea being to have “Sub-Librarians” to handle the various specific formats. But no firm conclusion was reached.
The idea of setting up an Echomai1 system based on Fidonet was briefly discussed. Two T/S BBSes are currently based on Fidonet nodes with a third to be added soon. The current ones are the Passaic BBS (node 107/559) and the Bus Depot (node 112/4). There seemed to be some enthusiasm for the idea. The last item of business was that we agreed to meet again on Compuserve on Wednesday, August 31st at 9:00pm EDT.