RBBS-PC (

acronym An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in '' NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, a ...

for Remote Bulletin Board System for the Personal Computer) was a

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open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

BBS software program. It was written entirely in

BASIC BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. The original version was created by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College ...

by a large team of people, starting with Russell Lane and then later enhanced by Tom Mack, Ken Goosens and others. It supported messaging conferences,

questionnaires A questionnaire is a research instrument that consists of a set of questions (or other types of prompts) for the purpose of gathering information from respondents through survey or statistical study. A research questionnaire is typically a mix o ...

doors A door is a hinged or otherwise movable barrier that allows ingress (entry) into and egress (exit) from an enclosure. The created opening in the wall is a ''doorway'' or ''portal''. A door's essential and primary purpose is to provide security b ...

(through the dropfile), and much more.

History

In 1982, Larry Jordan of the Capital PC Users Group started modifying some existing BBS software that had been ported from CP/M by Russell Lane.RBBS-PC History
/ref> The first major release of this effort, RBBS-PC CPC09, in May 1983 was written in interpreted BASIC and included the Xmodem file transfer protocol added by Jordan. In June 1983, Jordan turned over maintenance and enhancements to Tom Mack and Ken Goosens. The first release under Mack, version 10.0, was released July 4, 1983. New versions and features were released steadily throughout the rest of the 1980s. The final complete version, 17.4, was released March 22, 1992. Since version 17.4 at least four other code paths have developed. Some work has been done to unify the code paths and to develop version 18.0. Dan Drinnons CDOR Mods and Mapleleaf versions were further enhanced by beta testers Mike Moore and Bob Manapeli using Ken Goosens LineBled program to manipulate the

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comment (computer programming), comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a Computer program, p ...

to endless variations of the program.

Philosophy

From the beginning of RBBS-PC's development, the authors of the software had two goals as stated in the RBBS-PC documentation: * To show what could be done with the BASIC language and that "real programmers can/do program in BASIC." * To open a new medium of communication where anyone with a personal computer the ability to communicate freely. This idea was summarized as "Users helping users for free to help the free exchange of information."

References

{{Reflist, 30em

External links

RBBS-PC files

The BBS Software Directory - RBBS
Bulletin board system software DOS software Pre–World Wide Web online services Computer-related introductions in 1983 Public-domain software with source code