History of FOTW

Last modified: 2005-07-30 by rob raeside
Keywords: fotw | bottasini | history |
Links: FOTW homepage | search | disclaimer and copyright | write us | mirrors

by Mark Sensen

• Summary
• The mailing list
• The Website

• Giuseppe Bottasini's thoughts on the origin of FOTW
• Giuseppe Bottasini's thoughts on the origin of FOTW (in Italian)
• The FOTW flag
• FOTW flag proposals
• FOTW Flag Day
• FOTW's application for membership in FIAV
• Vexillologist of the Year

The mailing list was begun as a discussion group of about a dozen people, including Giuseppe Bottasini, Christopher Vance, and Alessio Bragadini, in about September 1993. It soon expanded to include a regular group of about 100 to 150 addresses. Many of the images initially distributed via the mailing list were written in PostScript by Christopher Vance, who maintained the best flag-site on the Internet at the time. The mailing list was initially managed by Giuseppe Bottasini, an engineer from CESI in Milan, until on July 24 1997 it moved to a majordomo list at University of California, Berkeley, managed by Josh Fruhlinger, an MA candidate in Classical History. On 1 August 1998 the mailing list moved to QNET.com, a majordomo list, managed by Edward Mooney, a social studies teacher in Palmdale, Antelope Valley, California. In April 2000, spam found its way through the majordomo list server, and in spite of heroic efforts by Edward, forced a move from the majordomo to eGroups, which was subsequently acquired by YahooGroups, the current host of the mailing list. In January 2000, Ole Andersen, of Copenhagen, Denmark, was appointed assistant list master, and took over full management of the list on 1 August 2000 for a two-year appointment, and he was replaced by Steve Kramer in 2002.  Steve had to relinquish his term in December 2003