Yes -- I can give this history. Kipp wrote an early version for 4.1BSD - but it is not the version in the releases. It ran on Ernie and did not do as much. I had used a different program on the PDP-10's and the ARPANET and I started over when Joy added sockets for 4.1A. I also made the infamous use of vax integers instead of network integers (and I knew better - but really did not think about until a few years later when I was at Masscomp and compiled it for the 68000 -- ugh). That version still had a couple of bugs in it (i.e. hung in the 4.1A networking code occasionally), but worked well enough on the CAD systems. I went away to a USENIX conference and while I was gone, my officemate Peter (Moore) took my code and fixed the problem, plus he put it into RCS. I gave that to Sam and that's the version that went out in 4.1C and beyond. Clem ᐧ ᐧ On Fri, Dec 13, 2024 at 9:29 AM Dan Cross wrote: > I'm curious if anyone has any history they can share about the BSD > "talk" program. > > I was fond of this back when it was still (relatively) common, but > given the way it's architected I definitely see why it fell out of use > as the Internet grew. Still, does anybody know what the history behind > it is? Initially, I thought it was written by Mike Karels, but that > was just my speculation from SCCS spelunking, and looking at the > sources from 4.2, I see RCS header strings that indicate it was > written by "moore" (Peter Moore?). talk.c says, "Written by Kipp > Hickman". > > It seems to have arrived pretty early on with respect to the > introduction of TCP/IP in BSD: the README alludes to some things > coming up in 4.1c. Clem, you seem to have had a hand in it, and are > credited (along with Peter Moore) for making it work on 4.1a. > > So I guess the question is, what was the motivation? Was it just to > have a more pleasing user-to-user communications experience, or was > discussion across the network an explicit goal? There's a note in > talk.c ("Modified to run between hosts by Peter Moore, 8/19/82") that > suggests this wasn't the original intent. Who thought up the > character-at-a-time display mode? > > Thanks for any insights. > > - Dan C. >