4 ms·

What are SDF's origins and history?

61 points by erikschoster 11y ago

comex 11y ago
While I never tried to join their community proper, several years ago I did send them $36 to get a lifetime "ARPA" membership. The service is, as you might expect, old fashioned: you get a grand total of 600MB of storage and access to a regular user account on their NetBSD servers. Meanwhile, for a few dollars per month from umpteen VPS providers I can get tons of storage and the ability to virtualize just about any operating system - and like many, I don't expect to get to a financial state where that would be a significant burden anytime soon, hopefully ever. But dealing with billing requires some level of active maintenance, however small, and in the long run providers come and go. SDF requires zero - I can have paid zero attention to the service for years, but if I suddenly need to do SSH forwarding to get past a firewall and don't have anything else handy, the shell is a few keystrokes away; if someone chances upon an old link to some basic web content I set up on it years ago, it will work. They've been around for close to three decades, and as a small enthusiasts' group (which survives despite having long had very uncompetitive prices for their higher-level services, which unlike ARPA have periodic fees), they're not as vulnerable as your average big company to going out of business when industry trends change. Personally, I'd have paid a lot more than $36 for that quality of guarantee!
kev009 11y ago
Wow, I got really sad reading about the idiot that left the borrowed 3B2/500 in his trunk and then on a porch in the elements. I've been hunting for a late model 3B2 for a decade.
- Aloha 11y ago
  I've found a couple of them, but have never been in a place to move/haul/store. The Seattle Museum of Communications has a couple 3b2 machines - I have an account on one of them, its old, but neat.
sho 11y ago
As an old anime fan, I got excited seeing the magic letters SDF in the title. Well, it's not about the spacecraft - but this ancient BBS indeed took its name from the beloved https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SDF-1_Macross https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SDF-1_Macross
- snogglethorpe 11y ago
  Don't even have to go as far as fiction.... SDF is a common abbreviation for the Japanese Self-Defense Force.
  - dalke 11y ago
    Or the "Structure Data File" format I often deal with in computational chemistry. Or the other items at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SDF https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SDF .
LeonardSmalls 11y ago
I had an account on lonestar.sdf.org, but then I let it lapse and there was a change to the server name/login. I'm not sure I could reclaim lonestar, but I remember trying to make that my permanent account for a while. Between that and Riseup, the early 00's were a great time for staking your place with an email address that signaled your values.
- jboynyc 11y ago
  Inactive accounts are in fact purged from time to time, but the domain you are thinking of is sdf.lonestar.org. The sdf.org domain was only added a few years ago, and for a while the admin was also using freeshell.org for marketing purposes. lonestar.org is the UUCP network that SDF has long been connected with.
kev009 11y ago
I'm not a member but one thing that's kind of interesting is having a rootless, shell-based community. We have this at work on our jumphosts and it's generally a Good Thing. Sharing datasets and scripts is just a filesystem namespace operation. It's up to the system operators to keep the machine running well and influencing how it is used by i.e. setting up certain packages and services. It's incredibly productive to be in a tmux session with vim, mutt, tin, man pages, ssh, etc as your interface and minimal distraction.
cpach 11y ago
It’s pretty amusing that the first Unix clone they tried was made by a former soda company :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Williams_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Williams_Company
- erikschoster 11y ago
  Oh interesting: Aaron Swartz's father was the founder
  - EvanAnderson 11y ago
    You might be interested in this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8970380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8970380
    - cpach 11y ago
      Fascinating! I had no idea that he was father to Aaron.
tux 11y ago
"(For related information on SDF and the history behind this public access UNIX system, read "The HACKER CRACKDOWN" by Bruce Sterling)" @ http://pdf.textfiles.com/books/hackcrac.pdf http://pdf.textfiles.com/books/hackcrac.pdf (use something like ePDFView and rotate the book)
- cbd1984 11y ago
  > "(For related information on SDF and the history behind this public access UNIX system, read "The HACKER CRACKDOWN" by Bruce Sterling)" @ http://pdf.textfiles.com/books/hackcrac.pdf http://pdf.textfiles.com/books/hackcrac.pdf (use something like ePDFView and rotate the book) This text is available so many places online it isn't even worthwhile to go to that much trouble to read it. Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/101 http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/101 MIT: http://www.mit.edu/hacker/hacker.html http://www.mit.edu/hacker/hacker.html Cory Doctorow reading it (link to first episode): https://archive.org/details/CoryDoctorowPodcast86 https://archive.org/details/CoryDoctorowPodcast86 Podcast feed with all episodes: http://xiph.org/~giles/2008/hackercrackdown-ogg.xml http://xiph.org/~giles/2008/hackercrackdown-ogg.xml http://xiph.org/~giles/2008/hackercrackdown.xml http://xiph.org/~giles/2008/hackercrackdown.xml Boing boing boing boing: http://boingboing.net/2008/01/13/podcast-of-bruce-ste.html http://boingboing.net/2008/01/13/podcast-of-bruce-ste.html
morb 11y ago
There's also sdf-eu.org for users located in Europe (eu server is in Germany). There aren't really that many shell providers. SDF (with SDF-EU) and devio.us are about the only ones that seem trustworthy (whatever that means) to me. These kind of services should be more popular, I think. I'd definitely join a Plan9 (or 9front), just to play with the stuff and learn the system. Check out 'profiles' on SDF. It's a CLI social network thingy. People don't really use it, but it brought a smile to my face.
dmix 11y ago
I love the HTML source code of one of the linked MOO games: view-source:http://thxmoo.org/ http://thxmoo.org/ No HTML tags, very clean & compact. It's rare to see handwritten HTML these days.
twenex 11y ago
Here are some SDF projects that make it an org worth supporting: http://anonradio.net http://anonradio.net - live DJ streaming http://motd.org http://motd.org - free Wordpress hosting http://sdf.org/?tour/compilations/vol5 http://sdf.org/?tour/compilations/vol5 - A soon to be released music compilation featuring 21 artists who are members of SDF http://sdf.org/?tutorials/metaarray http://sdf.org/?tutorials/metaarray - a high performance / large storage 'super server' for supporting members ($36/year) http://twenex.org http://twenex.org - a TOPS-20 project started in 1994 telnet://anonbbs.org:1337 - an old school anonymous bbs gopher://sdf.org - phlogs and user pages While the free/validated account does seem a bit restricted it is a good way to vet people without being too much of an obstacle. The lifetime ARPA member account could have its storage and other features increased as well as some adjustments to the other memberships. But those parameters are actually chosen by the members of SDF, so they can be changed through discussion. It seems unlikely SDF can compete with most commercial provider, as their goal is usually to get as many customers as possible in order to look attractive to sell to their larger competitor. 28 years in internet time is a long time. SDF survived the big rug shake out of the late 90s/early 00s and it keeps going. It has always been about doing something new and interesting and it has always been about that since it was started in the late 1980s. It has amassed a huge past that it proudly continues to drag along with it and doesn't seem to want to give up. Is that retro or is that just being authentic?

61 points by erikschoster 11y ago

comex 11y ago

While I never tried to join their community proper, several years ago I did send them $36 to get a lifetime "ARPA" membership. The service is, as you might expect, old fashioned: you get a grand total of 600MB of storage and access to a regular user account on their NetBSD servers. Meanwhile, for a few dollars per month from umpteen VPS providers I can get tons of storage and the ability to virtualize just about any operating system - and like many, I don't expect to get to a financial state where that would be a significant burden anytime soon, hopefully ever. But dealing with billing requires some level of active maintenance, however small, and in the long run providers come and go. SDF requires zero - I can have paid zero attention to the service for years, but if I suddenly need to do SSH forwarding to get past a firewall and don't have anything else handy, the shell is a few keystrokes away; if someone chances upon an old link to some basic web content I set up on it years ago, it will work. They've been around for close to three decades, and as a small enthusiasts' group (which survives despite having long had very uncompetitive prices for their higher-level services, which unlike ARPA have periodic fees), they're not as vulnerable as your average big company to going out of business when industry trends change. Personally, I'd have paid a lot more than $36 for that quality of guarantee!

kev009 11y ago

Wow, I got really sad reading about the idiot that left the borrowed 3B2/500 in his trunk and then on a porch in the elements. I've been hunting for a late model 3B2 for a decade.

Aloha 11y ago
I've found a couple of them, but have never been in a place to move/haul/store. The Seattle Museum of Communications has a couple 3b2 machines - I have an account on one of them, its old, but neat.

sho 11y ago

As an old anime fan, I got excited seeing the magic letters SDF in the title. Well, it's not about the spacecraft - but this ancient BBS indeed took its name from the beloved https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SDF-1_Macross https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SDF-1_Macross

snogglethorpe 11y ago
Don't even have to go as far as fiction.... SDF is a common abbreviation for the Japanese Self-Defense Force.
- dalke 11y ago
  Or the "Structure Data File" format I often deal with in computational chemistry. Or the other items at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SDF https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SDF .

LeonardSmalls 11y ago

I had an account on lonestar.sdf.org, but then I let it lapse and there was a change to the server name/login. I'm not sure I could reclaim lonestar, but I remember trying to make that my permanent account for a while. Between that and Riseup, the early 00's were a great time for staking your place with an email address that signaled your values.

jboynyc 11y ago
Inactive accounts are in fact purged from time to time, but the domain you are thinking of is sdf.lonestar.org. The sdf.org domain was only added a few years ago, and for a while the admin was also using freeshell.org for marketing purposes. lonestar.org is the UUCP network that SDF has long been connected with.

kev009 11y ago

I'm not a member but one thing that's kind of interesting is having a rootless, shell-based community. We have this at work on our jumphosts and it's generally a Good Thing. Sharing datasets and scripts is just a filesystem namespace operation. It's up to the system operators to keep the machine running well and influencing how it is used by i.e. setting up certain packages and services. It's incredibly productive to be in a tmux session with vim, mutt, tin, man pages, ssh, etc as your interface and minimal distraction.

cpach 11y ago

It’s pretty amusing that the first Unix clone they tried was made by a former soda company :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Williams_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Williams_Company

erikschoster 11y ago
Oh interesting: Aaron Swartz's father was the founder
- EvanAnderson 11y ago
  You might be interested in this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8970380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8970380
  - cpach 11y ago
    Fascinating! I had no idea that he was father to Aaron.

tux 11y ago

"(For related information on SDF and the history behind this public access UNIX system, read "The HACKER CRACKDOWN" by Bruce Sterling)" @ http://pdf.textfiles.com/books/hackcrac.pdf http://pdf.textfiles.com/books/hackcrac.pdf (use something like ePDFView and rotate the book)

cbd1984 11y ago
> "(For related information on SDF and the history behind this public access UNIX system, read "The HACKER CRACKDOWN" by Bruce Sterling)" @ http://pdf.textfiles.com/books/hackcrac.pdf http://pdf.textfiles.com/books/hackcrac.pdf (use something like ePDFView and rotate the book) This text is available so many places online it isn't even worthwhile to go to that much trouble to read it. Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/101 http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/101 MIT: http://www.mit.edu/hacker/hacker.html http://www.mit.edu/hacker/hacker.html Cory Doctorow reading it (link to first episode): https://archive.org/details/CoryDoctorowPodcast86 https://archive.org/details/CoryDoctorowPodcast86 Podcast feed with all episodes: http://xiph.org/~giles/2008/hackercrackdown-ogg.xml http://xiph.org/~giles/2008/hackercrackdown-ogg.xml http://xiph.org/~giles/2008/hackercrackdown.xml http://xiph.org/~giles/2008/hackercrackdown.xml Boing boing boing boing: http://boingboing.net/2008/01/13/podcast-of-bruce-ste.html http://boingboing.net/2008/01/13/podcast-of-bruce-ste.html

morb 11y ago

There's also sdf-eu.org for users located in Europe (eu server is in Germany). There aren't really that many shell providers. SDF (with SDF-EU) and devio.us are about the only ones that seem trustworthy (whatever that means) to me. These kind of services should be more popular, I think. I'd definitely join a Plan9 (or 9front), just to play with the stuff and learn the system. Check out 'profiles' on SDF. It's a CLI social network thingy. People don't really use it, but it brought a smile to my face.

dmix 11y ago

I love the HTML source code of one of the linked MOO games: view-source:http://thxmoo.org/ http://thxmoo.org/ No HTML tags, very clean & compact. It's rare to see handwritten HTML these days.

twenex 11y ago

Here are some SDF projects that make it an org worth supporting: http://anonradio.net http://anonradio.net - live DJ streaming http://motd.org http://motd.org - free Wordpress hosting http://sdf.org/?tour/compilations/vol5 http://sdf.org/?tour/compilations/vol5 - A soon to be released music compilation featuring 21 artists who are members of SDF http://sdf.org/?tutorials/metaarray http://sdf.org/?tutorials/metaarray - a high performance / large storage 'super server' for supporting members ($36/year) http://twenex.org http://twenex.org - a TOPS-20 project started in 1994 telnet://anonbbs.org:1337 - an old school anonymous bbs gopher://sdf.org - phlogs and user pages While the free/validated account does seem a bit restricted it is a good way to vet people without being too much of an obstacle. The lifetime ARPA member account could have its storage and other features increased as well as some adjustments to the other memberships. But those parameters are actually chosen by the members of SDF, so they can be changed through discussion. It seems unlikely SDF can compete with most commercial provider, as their goal is usually to get as many customers as possible in order to look attractive to sell to their larger competitor. 28 years in internet time is a long time. SDF survived the big rug shake out of the late 90s/early 00s and it keeps going. It has always been about doing something new and interesting and it has always been about that since it was started in the late 1980s. It has amassed a huge past that it proudly continues to drag along with it and doesn't seem to want to give up. Is that retro or is that just being authentic?