FreePort was written by Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) for the Cleveland Free-Net (CFN), and it is now used by the majority of all Free-Nets. NPTN explicitly recommended FreePort to the organizing committees of metropolitan systems, but it encouraged rural Free-Nets to use software that is cheaper and easier to maintain.
FreePort's greatest strengths are its power and portability. "The Cleveland system actually supports 406 simultaneous users, including connections through all types of Internet service providers and 260 dial-in telephone lines." (Neff) It will run on any computer (or group of computers) that uses the UNIX operating system. It can allow users controlled access to other computers on the Internet via other UNIX programs such as telnet, gopher, and lynx.
The task of maintaining CFN's menus and message forums is distributed among dozens of SIGops (special-interest-group operators) who can do their share of the maintenance from home, work, or anywhere they may be. Users with e-mail accounts elsewhere on the Internet can contribute posts to message forums by simply sending e-mail to those forums. CFN allows users unlimited time per day, though each individual session (connection) may last no longer than an hour.
It would be difficult to discuss FreePort, however, without admitting that "There is fairly general agreement that this software -- as it exists -- is inadequate." (Schuler, p.483) Specifically, it suffers from an old-fashioned user interface, overwork, and instability.
Each time I surveyed or interviewed a CFN user, I asked whether she or he thought the system would be better if it had a graphical interface. Much to my surprise, nearly everyone responded vehemently that it would not:
"If CFN moves to such an interface, I will close my account immediately. My previous 'community' system, Capitol Area Public Access (CAPAccess) is doing/has done exactly that and I not only resigned as a Help Desk Volunteer there, I had them close my account." (Twenty-Six)
"I use the CFN _BECAUSE_ I don't need a bloody mouse to do so." (Richards)
"Text-only access isn't dead on Usenet, nor on the LISTSERVs, nor on IRC. Heck, some people even read *books* without asking 'does it have pictures?' ... It's mainly the newbies that go ga-ga over pictures - in fact one of the most popular Internet features on America Online is the ability to turn *off* graphics." (Kutz, May 11)
"When I know exactly where it's going, I can almost take it faster, like when I'm trying to get to the newsgroups, from the main menu I know I want 13, then I hit return, and then I immediately hit 4 to get to the newsgroups, then immediately hit 8, so I can almost do it faster than clicking around with graphics." (Twenty-Nine)
"You're not going to attract better content with fancier graphics, so why bother?" (Ammann, Jun. 22)Some users felt that a graphical interface would make CFN more expensive to maintain (Four), and feared that CWRU might start charging users for the service (Twenty-Seven). Others feared that if CFN had such an interface it would come into competition with commercial Internet service providers (Moore). A general sentiment was that CFN's text interface is part of what makes it CFN (Lebovitz).
The main concern that Tim Connors and John Kurilec, both of NPTN, have regarding implementation of a graphical interface is that it should be done in such a way that the resulting system will be "backward compatible." That is, its text interface must continue to work as well as it did before the graphical interface was introduced so that users with less-expensive computers will not abandon the system.
The vehement responses of CFN's users are most likely due to their self-selection; those who disliked its text-only interface would not have stayed on CFN long enough for me to interview them. "Joan Coate, formerly of the WELL on-line system states that 'The all-text display that still dominates on-line systems appeals to people who love word play, language, and writing. And it appeals to people with active minds' (1992)." (Schuler, p.60) The target population of most community networks, however, is not limited to the verbal elite.
Preference for user-unfriendly technologies is hardly a new phenomenon, but I was still surprised to see it in this case. Strangely enough, these same users felt that FreePort does need improvement; it "needs a *better* interface, not necessarily graphical." (Kutz, Jun. 23)
"the Free-Net already has about 50,000 active users [note: this is as opposed to the 160,000 registered users], so its 70 phone lines are frequently tied up. Busy signals are routine unless you call at odd hours or use an alternate means of access, such as a 'telnet' gateway through the Internet." (Melvin, c.5)
"The only reason *this* Free-net is slow is that CWRU hasn't been putting much hardware into it, and so it runs like molasses (you go to post something, and it often takes well over a minute to get your cursor back )." (Kutz, May 11)It seems that CFN's popularity has outstripped CWRU's plans for expansion. All advertising for the system outside of CWRU has ceased, but it continues to attract new users -- many of them from outside the Cleveland area -- through word-of-mouth. Many users suspect that the decline of CFN's reliability (described below) is a deliberate attempt to discourage usership so that the system will be less busy.
"Now you can't even log in, and if you post your posts disappear. We call it the throttle monster, but it disappears, it gets lost, you know? Your e-mail is about the only so far thing that hasn't been messed with, although some people say that their e-mail disappears. You know, they go through these so-called upgrades that don't look like they do much at all." (Billi, Jun. 29)Since CFN is the only FreePort system I studied, I cannot say to what extent this deterioration is inherent in the software rather than due to overwork and lack of maintenance. However, CFN is the flagship FreePort system, maintained by the same institution that wrote the software, so one would expect that other FreePort systems might be experiencing similar problems.