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Columbia University Ending the Kermit Project

Posted by Unknown on from the how-will-ms-piggy-transfer-files-now dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Columbia University has announced that the Kermit Project will be ended in July 2011, after more than 30 years in existence. Open Kermit (C-Kermit) will remain available, but without any support or ongoing development. Kermit-95, which cannot be open-sourced, will remain available for license purchases but without support or maintenance."

12 of 146 comments (clear)

  1. I guess they ran out of money? by stillnotelf · · Score: 4, Funny

    It's not easy needing green...

  2. heh by sentientbeing · · Score: 4, Funny

    Poor Kermit. He was never the same after he got laid off from that theater group. He didnt like the managment choices. Said it was a puppet regime.

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    beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his mind he dreams himself your master
  3. Poor Miss Piggy by StuartHankins · · Score: 3, Funny

    Condolences to Miss Piggy. I bet she will be devastated by the news.

    1. Re:Poor Miss Piggy by meta+coder · · Score: 3, Funny

      but now she's available

  4. Aw. by djdanlib · · Score: 3, Funny

    Sad news indeed. Kermit has finally croaked.

  5. Re:somewhat sad... by Marillion · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I feel as if a movie star I hadn't watched in forever has just passed away. "I didn't know he was still alive?"

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    This is a boring sig
  6. Nostalgia. by Seumas · · Score: 5, Interesting

    More than Duke Nukem or anything else I've heard referenced recently, none have blasted me back to my youth more than hearing the words "kermit" and "zmodem". Right around the same time that you could go down to the local Hacker Shack (later renamed, due to conflicts with Radio Shack) and thumb through thousands of 5.25" floppies organized like mini-albums and you'd pay a buck just for a floppy with a looping black and white video you could watch on your grainy CGA.

    God damn, I miss those days. I'm glad the internet is widespread and aiding tens of millions of people in their life on a daily basis, but there was something delightful about being part of a tiny group of weirdos connecting to each other with ATA commands and some guy's hobby board.

    1. Re:Nostalgia. by erice · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I had more fun with computers back then. Nowadays, my quad-core desktop mostly sits idle unless I'm reading Slashdot, and I'm far less impressed with the speed of my 12Mbps VDSL circuit today than I was with v.32bis back in the day...

      In those days, getting online was an adventure. There was gold out there. You just had the figure out the right mix of technical and social engineering to get to it. I wrote layers of terminal and REXX scripts to automate the retrieval of freeware and Usenet articles and work around connection destroying misfeatures in the 7171 protocol converters. I used Kermit because nothing else could transfer through 7E1, even if it were available for EBCDIC machines. I wrote a DOS based terminal server to run on a friendly staff member's PC so I could get the sort of clean text interface Unix and VMS people took for granted.

      Nowadays, Internet connectivity is something that you buy and it mostly just works. It's a lot more useful but not nearly as much fun.

  7. "Open Source" before it was cool by jabberw0k · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Kermit was my first foray into the advantages of Open Source, even if it was not Free Software.

    The company where I worked in college (Digital Techniques Inc. who made a line of touchscreen computers in the early 80s) had an MS-DOS machine that ran on STD-Bus, non-PC compatible... and with the source-code from Columbia (on 9-track tape!) I was able to write a communication driver for the 2661 DUART (same as in the Zenith Z-100, and as compared to the IBM-PC's 8250 UART). Finally we could zap files up to the VAX at a blazing 19,200 baud! Never could iron out all the interrupt issues for even-higher speeds.

    A few years later when this Linux thing came along I said, Aha! ... thanks Kermit for being Open before Open was cool.

  8. Re:Is anyone using kermit anymore? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yes, it is used a lot in the embedded world. One of the few tools available to recover a bricked RS232-only based device. Used on things like the gumstix, beagleboard, and lots of other SBC like ARM based embedded devices. If you make/order custom versions or your own shipping product does not contain alternatives like MMC/SD card boot capabilities, c-kermit is one of the few things out there to allow you to boot, load code, and then go to console all from one tool on such devices. Saved my (and my employers) ass many times on bricked or buggy embedded devices.

  9. What could be Kermit's most interesting legacy by Coeurderoy · · Score: 3, Informative

    I miss Kermit like I miss my old Kreidler motobike, found memories but I'd probable wouldn't really like it if I would need it again...

    But what I would really appreciate from columbia would be a clear and detailled explanation of what parts or "kind of parts" of kermit-95 and why ? cannot be open sourced ?
    Are there pieces of code written by Open Source adverse copyright holders ?
    Or "lost coypright holders" that have rights but cannot be located
    Or legally "challenged" copyright holders (childs who are too young to "agree" to anything but are the sole heir of some copyrights ? for example ?)
    Backdoors mandated by some three letters authority that cannot be released under an open source licences :-)
    code that implement something patented and the patent holders do not authorise the inclusion in open source code ..
    Or contracts with former clients prohibiting "unfair compétition"...
    or, or, ....

    I know that the value of an Open Source Kermit-95 would be very law, it might be better on Windows than C-Kermit for some values of "better"...
    but it's unlikelly that any futur use would be better served with an update of K95 rather than a modificiation of CK.

    But the lesson on "freeing" code would be very interesting, and after all Columbia as a quite proheminent law school... so it would be interesting...

    1. Re:What could be Kermit's most interesting legacy by Coeurderoy · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Well that cannot be the real reason since as show on the C-Kermit site:
      Due to relaxations in USA export law, secure versions of C-Kermit are available in source-code form, supporting Kerberos IV, Kerberos V, SSL/TLS, and SRP. and from the C-Kermit man page it can also make SSH connections through your external SSH client application.

      So conceivably an open source Kermit-95 with just the SSH ripped out (if really necessary) could be made avaiable, if that would be all...

      Alternativelly a legitimate message could be: C-Kermit is better and allready BSD so it's better in the long run even if Kermit-95 has some adventage in dying old machines ... so we do not bother ..
      Or out contracts with Amazon, E-Academy, etc ... prohibits us...

      But "we can't", well why ? of course they have no obligation even no "moral" obligation after all they paid for the developpment and it helped lots of people...

      But on an other hand it is unlickely that they made any real revenue out of it even over 30 years, so as an historical and econonical case study it would be interesting to see what the motivations for the old licences where, and what the motivations for keeping K95 close are ...