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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."

5 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. 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.

  4. 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.