The Circumlunar Universe is a confederation of independently administered but tightly interconnected public-access unix servers, offering a place for creative, social and technical undertakings on a non-commercial basis to anybody who is interested in distributed digital communities built on traditional text-based technologies. Participants in these communities call themselves sundogs.
Want to know more? Read the Circumlunar Universe FAQ
The Circumlunar Universe consists of colonies and outposts:
Circumlunar colonies represent stable, long-term projects intended to attract significant userbases. Colonies offer unix shell access, and are a place to call $HOME. Users on one colony can interact with users on any other colony by exchanging email, chatting via a common IRC network, or posting messages on a bulletin board whose contents are mirrored across all colonies. You are in some ways "closer" to the users on your own colony, but for the most part you are joining the same community no matter which colony you join. If it helps, you can think of them like the pubnix equivalent of Mastodon instances.
Current colonies:
Mare Crisium Soviet Socialist Regency
Mare Serenitatis Circumlunar Corporate Republic
Mare Tranquillitatis People's Circumlunar Zaibatsu
Circumlunar outposts are experimental projects run by individual members of colonies. They offer fewer services than colonies, and generally do not come with the same expectations of long term availability, regular maintenance or transparent administration. An outpost might literally be a RaspberryPi in somebody's basement. It might disappear next month, or it might run smoothly for years. Outposts are a way for colony members to practice system administration, experiment with interesting ideas, and provide additional services to their fellow sundogs. If you are a colony member with an idea for an outpost, please contact solderpunk.
Current outposts:
The Circumlunar Universe is one facet of an expanding universe of small public access unix servers (dubbed "micropubnixes" by Zaibatsu sundog cmccabe) and networks. Admins of Circumlunar Colonies are encouraged, but not required, to facilitate close relations with these friends and allies, e.g. by allowing outgoing SSH connections to other pubnix servers, accepting incoming finger connections from other pubnix servers, permitting email exchange, etc.