[ih] distributed network control: Usenet

[John Gilmore]

Jack Haverty wrote:
> What I was referencing was a non-technical design decision -- the notion
> that there shouldn't be any single person, corporation, or organization
> "managing the network".   The ARPANET, and IIRC all other networks of
> the day, were under a single organization's control.
	
The Usenet had no central point of control, and was contemporaneous with
the ARPANET and early Internet.  Its software was even rewritten several
times by different parties (e.g. A News, B News, C News, Notesfiles,
NNTP).  Its global discussion groups (net.foo) were evolved by mutual
agreement (comp.foo, sci.bar, etc) and then later successfully forked
(alt) when the primary sites feared hosting discussions that others
wanted to have (e.g. on sex and drugs).

Does anybody know the status of the Usenet today?  I got off it
years ago.

	John