About Laidback.org
History
Laidback Systems was created in May 1998 by Phil Helliwell and Andy Brown,
out of a mixture of boredom and wanting to use available resources. i.e.
it seemed like a good idea at the time, so we did it.
The original aim was to get a cool domain name, and stick a computer
on the end of it. The cool domain name was to be Break.Net, and the
computer called Gimmea [bad joke, I know], but someone beat us to the name
by a week...
The new address was registered Thursday 21st May, and the server was assembled
on Friday 22nd of May in Hull. By July it was ready to go online, by
the 19th of July, Parcelforce had done three hundred pounds of damage to
it. Early October, and the machine was delivered back to be fixed. A few
hours later, a new machine was ready...
Concept
The idea of a free network inspired
Freeside at Hull University in 1997, and went on to inspire Laidback.org.
To be able to offer a fast, free (or very cheap) service to people who
wanted the speed and space of commercial servers, but could only afford the
free ones would be good.
If somebody had a reasonable idea that just needed the server space,
Laidback.org could accomodate it.
Name
The name choice was made by Phil. A quote from another person just about
sums it up though: "Face it, Andy. If you were any more laid back, you'd
be horizontal". - Hey, it fits :)
The system rules are fairly slack - be nice, and the bandwidth is a favour,
not a right. Anybody with a decent cause can have a web account.
Restrictions
To keep Laidback.org online with the lowest of running costs, Laidback can't
be as laidback as they would like to be. Because of ISP arrangements, the
use of the system is somewhat restricted, so only selected users are given
access to the system.
Location
At the moment, laidback.org is located in Leeds, UK, as are Phil and
Andy. Previously, the servers and people were at various combinations
of Hull, Leeds, Fulham and Grimsby.
Original Users
The original users of Laidback.org (other than Phil and Andy) were the
guys doing the Psion site, and the Switchboard mirror. The original local
projects included Freeside, SunWare unix archives, Linux archives and
Dumb Science. Psions kinda died out, as did Switchboard. As people
started using the internet more, and it grew lots, lots of other mirrors
of SunWare and Linux arrived. When Kent Mirror service is so damn good,
there's no point in running a mirror any more!
Newer Projects
There's a lot of domains using the laidback.org servers now. Mainly
personal sites, but there are some things worth mentioning.
DaveG's academic notes, and dpawsons XML papers get a lot of
hits. There's a couple of meteorological projects, some electronics
stuff, and lots of the good old style silly internet stuff.
We'd like to keep our little corner of the internet just like it was
supposed to be. Useful.