Even those of who came in early have missed things. ;-)
The difference between Usenet (and, say, the Arpanet) is one of organization.
The Arpanet was funded by the folks in the five-sided building as a testbed
for network research and as a communication mechanism for people doing
other kinds of research that they were paying for. They established
strict rules for its usage, decided which sites could join it, and
(to a certain extent) decided what services it would support. As time
went on, several things happened: the military sites were compartmented
off on Milnet, a *lot* more sites joined, higher-speed links were put
into place, it was renamed the Internet, many links to other networks were
put into place, and chunks of it began to be operated by commercial entitites.
(I'm oversimplifying, but the central point is that someone, or multiple
someones, have been driving the network from Day One.)
Usenet, on the other hand, started pretty much as a Unix hacker's network.
The effort necessary to get early versions of UUCP and News working made
it more than just a casual exercise; the effort necessary to bury all
those long-distance phone charges in a budget was even greater. :-)
Sites wound up exchanging mail or news with each other on an ad-hoc
basis, and decisions were made by the people who ran the sites.
As traffic and the number of sites increased, the topology of the
net evolved to a configuration which (roughly) consisted of a backbone
trunk with various sites hung off it. The people who ran the backbone
sites tended to be the ones with the deepest pockets; they exerted
control over the net because they were paying the bills.
Eventually, the backbone cabal more-or-less abdicated. The advent
of high-speed links (such as the transmission of news over the
Arpanet/Internet via NNTP), the explosive growth of the net and
resulting increase in connectivity, internal disagreements, and the
hassle of dealing with folks who demanded "volunteer" work all
contributed to the end. Usenet is now self-governing, with
David Lawrence as chief referee, and Gene Spafford as line judge.
("Excuse me, do you run the universe?". "I try not to." --- Douglas Adams)
The result is that Usenet is a curious anarchy that sometimes wants
to think it's a democracy. There are some broad generalizations that
can be made about it, as Ed pointed out: the reception given to
commercial traffic has never been very warm, for instance. And as the
way it's run becomes more codified, it will become even more homogenous.
---Rsk
p.s. Would this be a good time to tell y'all that the unthinkable has
happened, and His Spafness's Main Squeeze is expected to deliver a...
well, a *something*, next year? I think we should name it "ihnp4".
This page last updated on: Jul 1 09:16