FidoNews vol 8 #48, page 4 article titled "number nine, number niine..." referencing the Beatle's song REVOLUTION 9 (we're old).
This is still a radical and freeing idea, that was stomped out of FIdoNet by reactionary assholes.
The FidoNet nodelist, appears to be a literal /etc/hosts for the FidoNet (some 35,000 systems at its peak) but it was in fact assembled from hundreds of fragments compiled by each net (city or rural cluster, world wide) and collated "upwards" for assembly and distribution. It became reasonably sophisticated, with diffs etc. It was assembled anew weekly.
Number Nine was a proposal to allow the assembly of the nodelist at the point of use -- completely eliminating the heirarchy that had grown to manage it.
The idea was to use an "echo conference" (think: usenet group) to distribute fragments, with encryption to satisfy the very paranoid FidoNet culture.
It was shot down by hierarchists.
The end result would have been a truly, utterly, decentralized network, impervious to outside forces to stop any node from communication (node == instance == host). No hierarchy at all, beyond the "natural" (sic) clustering of BBSs based upon population density.
Lol, there's also a polite "article" by an newly cooperative Steve Winter.
