BTW: dates for this is starting in the early-mid 1970s for ArpaNet/UNIX
News/USENIX,  V7 arrives 79, and Truscott does his talk I believe winter
1980.
ᐧ

On Wed, Feb 8, 2023 at 2:57 PM Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:

> Will,
>
> For those of us outside of BTL, i.e. the Academic users, "Unix News" was
> created - which became ';login" - We started to meet informally at a few
> universities and talk to each other.   Those of us on the ArpaNet that
> email/FTP and the like, started to share patches - but mostly things were
> shared when we got together via magtape. When they were held in NYC, we
> might be lucky and someone from Research might come (and even accidentally
> spill a few bits on the floor that mix fix something).  Eventually, USENIX
> was formed, and we met twice a year formally. That was so popular, USENIX
> started having specialty conferences such as the one for C and C++, LISA,
> Networking, Linux and Free Software, etc. Similarly, with V7, UUCP was
> given to use a USENET was started by Tom Truscott and his famous
> "auto-dialler" that he hacked with a 12v relay, a DR-11C and described at
> the Bolder USENIX conference.   Netnews was not far behind - which sadly
> became net.noise when the signal-to-noise ratio disappeared.
>
> Clem
> ᐧ
>