BYTE GETS CoSy ON BIX
by Mark Szpakowski

CoSy is a Computer Conferencing system rapidly gaining prominence in Canada, where it was developed at the University of Guelph, and in the United States, where it will be the host software for BYTE Magazine's BIX (Byte Information eXchange). It supports mail, including some inter-network mail; multi-party private "conversations"; open and closed conferences; software downloads using Kermit or Xmodem protocols; and NAPLPS encoding of graphics. Distributed conferencing, allowing users on different machines to participate in one large conference, will be supported soon; this is already taking place between Guelph and the European COM system.

CoSy itself has a comparatively sweet, micro feeling. It presents itself very simply and unobtrusively; hitting RETURN will usually do the intuitively obvious thing, and can suffice to take you through an entire session. This ease of use is a major reason for BYTE's choosing CoSy, along with its being written in the C language and running under the highly portable Unix operating system (it has been implemented on machines ranging from the AT&T Unix PC to an IBM 3081). Unlike the Participate software (used by The Source and Unison, for example) which creates a tree structure, allowing indefinite branching of conferences off of conferences, CoSy is two-tiered: there are "conferences", and conferences can have multiple "topics". It is possible to comment on messages, and to follow such comments backwards and forwards, thus creating threads within a topic, as well as to search for text strings within a topic.

At Guelph, the university community has free access to CoSy, which is also being used to carry out much of the University's work. However, 400 non-Guelph users from 28 countries add a larger, international, flavor. It's remarkable to converse on a daily basis with people in Switzerland and Finland! Recently, a scientific conference in Europe was preceded by simultaneous preparatory conferences on both CoSy and COM. CoSy at Guelph is thus a local system which also serves as a global host.

McGraw-Hill Inc., BYTE's parent company, is using CoSy for internal communications and for BIX. BIX is currently in beta test with over 2000 users, and is already tying together BYTE's East- and West-coast offices. The host hardware is an Arete multi-processing Unix system with 88 ports. Commercial usage will begin sometime in October, with local access through McGraw-Hill's DRINET available in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and Boston at evening rates of $6/hour, and remote access through Tymnet at $8/hour evenings.

George Bond, managing editor for electronic publishing and communication, stresses that BIX's focus on microcomputers will differentiate it from other services. Considering the extent and quality of BYTE's subscriber base, this should be a really
exciting network for the computeroids among us, who will be able not only to share information about microcomputer hardware and software but also to correspond directly with BYTE editors and writers. This in turn will inevitably affect the nature of the publishing services offered by BYTE and McGraw-Hill.

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Contacts:
CoSy Systems Group, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario,
Canada N1G 2W1. (519) 824-4120, ext. 3065 (Tom Smith).

Byte Magazine, 70 Main Street, Peterborough NH 03458
(603) 924-9281 (George Bond).

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Author's note: Mark Szpakowski is a software developer residing
in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He cofounded Community Memory in 1972;
operates Dharmanet, an international network of Buddhists, as
well as a local BBS; and will chair the "Regional and Local
Networks" session at the November ENA conference.