BBS

From JargonWiki

The Jargon File Parts of this article are based on the Jargon File, v. 4.4.7, a public domain document of hacker jargon.

BBS: /B·B·S/ n.

[common; abbreviation, "Bulletin Board System"] An electronic bulletin board system; that is, a message database where people can log in and leave broadcast messages for others grouped (typically) into topic groups. The term was especially applied to the thousands of local BBS systems that operated during the pre-Internet microcomputer era of roughly 1980 to 1995, typically run by amateurs for fun out of their homes on MS-DOS boxes with a single modem line each. Fans of Usenet and Internet or the big commercial timesharing bboards such as CompuServe and GEnie tended to consider local BBSes the low-rent district of the hacker culture, but they served a valuable function by knitting together lots of hackers and users in the personal-micro world who would otherwise have been unable to exchange code at all. Post-Internet, BBSs are likely to be local newsgroups on an ISP; efficiency has increased but a certain flavor has been lost. See also bboard.

Sources

Public Domain This article is in the public domain and is not subject to copyright, trademark, or any other legal protection of intellectual property. Any and all user contributions to this page are also immediately dedicated to the public domain. Editors of this page must accede to these terms as special conditions of the standard editing privileges.