Saturday 06/19/2010 by Icculus

End Of An Era: Rip Netspace.org

Today, the services of Netspace.Org are being discontinued.  Netspace had provided hosting and mailing list services to Phish.Net and numerous other sites and fans of music since summer 1994.  Founded by Brown University students, including Lee Silverman (who had worked on Helping Friendly Book setlists in the early 1990s with Shelly Culbertson and many others), Netspace was one of the first Linux WWW servers.  Netspace's computers were also originally funded by Phish tapers and tape traders, including some who are still around today. Please read more about its remarkable history in Jack Lebowitz's blog post here and in this Wired article from May 2001. And thanks to everyone at Netspace for providing such wonderful services over the years!
5 comments - Link: http://phi.sh/oe3og

Comments

, comment by yanzlow
yanzlow When I first joined the mailing list I was was an undergrad in biology. As a network admin nowadays, i've got a special appreciation for what this means. Thanks to all the players involved in setting up something that set me on my way to 72 shows (so far) and countless hours of fun and Phish related procrastination all these years!
Score: 2      
, comment by MarcoEsc
MarcoEsc All hail Netspace. Truly revolutionary, I'm pretty sure that this was the first case of an online community rallying to purchase and maintain the resources needed to support that community. (Meaning we raised money and bought a server so the phish.net archives wouldn't go away.) One of those early Internet things that makes me smile :)
Score: 2      
, comment by Icculus
Icculus I vaguely remember when Lee (at least I think it was Lee) went to rec.music.phish to take up a collection for the servers for Netspace. I was heavily invested in Phish in summer 1994 (trying to see and hear everything I could, which was difficult since I had a real job), and I think I contributed some money, but I can't recall for sure. I know I wanted to. Hey... I did a search and check this out, an email to rec.music.phish from Ben Tanen, dated Sep 4 1994, announcing the start of the Widespread Panic mailing list (SPREADNET) on Netspace! http://tinyurl.com/24uq3vk />
Anyway, I started mailing lists for fans of KVHW and Steve Kimock in 1998 on Netspace. For many years, the Kimock discussion list was a pretty fun "place" for a lot of good people.

[wistful sigh]
Score: 2      
, comment by velvet_c
velvet_c Bum-mer!!! A sizable hunk of my early learning and communications about Phish and other bands on the "scene" came courtesy of this amazing listserv. Started signing up for lists in Spring of 1995, a sophomore at SUNY Oswego. Now I really feel old. But in a good way. Bye Netspace.org -- you'll never be forgotten!
Score: 1      
, comment by jackl
jackl @Icculus said:
Hey... I did a search and check this out, an email to rec.music.phish from Ben Tanen, dated Sep 4 1994, announcing the start of the Widespread Panic mailing list (SPREADNET) on Netspace! http://tinyurl.com/24uq3vk />
***
[wistful sigh]
Ben Tanen stayed involved as a Director of the Netspace Foundation and one of the users of the community server up until the end of Netspace. In the photo illustrating my blog post about Netspace here http://phi.sh/~9uZWsw , you can see Ben (user btanen at port 11) logged into the Netspace server the day before it was disconnected from the internet.
Score: 0      
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