🚀 go-pugleaf

Followup: to <4jdmej$1oe@nntp1.best.com> 
  author: by Rigor@clever.net (Matt Fox) 
composed: 28 Mar 1996 09:34:11 GMT it was stated:

>In article <BILLW.96Mar28004654@puli.cisco.com>, billw@puli.cisco.com says...
>>
>>
>>    BUYER BEWARE
>>    [lots of dirt deleted]
>>
>>So what are you?  Disgruntled ex-employee now working for "Mustang" ?
>>
>
>all mustang did was steal colossus source code and buy the company
>6 years later and cover there tracks
>

I have to respond to this, having been a sysop for over 15 years and
watching all this, Calling the first of almost every bbs software that's
ever been... 

The man to thank for all of these, including the beginning of Wildcat
and PowerBBS is Steven Fox of Albuquerque. He released both an 8bit and
16bit code in Pascal into the public domain known as ROS (Remote
Operating System) in the early 1980's. He still runs Albuquerque ROS
which has been rated one of the best bbs systems in the nation several
times.

I watched the very beginnings of Wildcat and Mustang and noticed that
nothing had changed much in their original compiles of ROS or another
version of this put forth by Les Archumbault called PICS (Pascal
Integrated Communication System), also released into the public domain..
The first Wildcats up in California were friends of mine who were old
Epson QX Valdocs users converting to new fancy 286 systems! The original
Wildcats were some of the buggiest systems I've called.

When we registered with PowerBBS, we got the code for it and compared it
to the PICS Pascal code and found it was the same. Russell didn't even
change the basic procedures names... He would apparently have you think
this occurred though some miracle of ESP... <g>

There is nothing wrong with starting with public domaine code at all. I
compiled 8bit version myself for the Epson QX and it is still run in a
few places. If you call them you'll think you are connected to an older
Power or Wildcat system.... I even had it doing screens in Epson HASCI
graphics characters on top of ANSI and ASCII... all in 1981....!

But give credit where credit is due. Steven Fox made the first public
domaine code which was the basis for many bbs software systems today.
You can call him and thank him. He's listed in the Bob's USBBS list...

Actually there was not really a major departure from these kind of
systems until Excalibur showed up on the screen. They were laughed at
when they proposed using Windows as a platform. Now they have inspired
many new beautiful GUI systems and everyone is some kind of GUI
expert... developing some new kind of GUI system.... No one's laughing
any more. But again give credit where credit is due. Excalibur is the
original pure Windows to the core bbs system, developed quite literally
from the ground up. PowerBBS instead still operates it's basic shell
with code that showed up in the early 1980's. It was never intended for
this purpose. 

--
bcnu

Roger Heath         |w i n d o w s  t e c h k n o w (tm)        
heath@techknow.com  |internet access provider    modem:847-729-2902
inventor bioengineer|"metro chicagoland's ms-windows super system!"
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usa excalibur system|45 cdroms 30+Gig  tcp/ip(telnet):@techknow.com