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Creator of Relay On BITNET, Predecessor of IRC, Dies (blogs.com)

Posted by timothy on from the rest-in-peace dept.

tmjva writes: Jeff Kell passed away on November 25 as reported here in the 3000newswire. He was inventor of BITNET Relay, a predecessor of Internet Relay Chat using the REXX programming language.

In 1987 he wrote the following preserved article about RELAY and here is his obituary. May this early inventor rest in peace.

16 of 34 comments (clear)

  1. No Relay to Great Beyond by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Goodbye and thank you Jeff, wherever you are.

    1. Re:No Relay to Great Beyond by rjr3 · · Score: 2

      smsg rscs cmd ....

      what fond, fond memories ...

  2. oh no! by Limitless_Potential · · Score: 2, Funny

    IRC better start worrying, its next in line for the chop

    1. Re:oh no! by sims+2 · · Score: 1

      Afaik irc is still fairly popular. I figure cable tv will go first.

      --
      Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
    2. Re:oh no! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      What IRC needs is social media integration. And the possibility to login with your Facebook or Google+ account. *Ducks*

    3. Re:oh no! by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 1

      The college students I work with all seem to be on Snapchat and Skype - mostly at the same time. The only people I know who are on IRC are unix sysadmins - that's their social network.

      --
      #DeleteChrome
    4. Re:oh no! by jonwil · · Score: 1

      IRC is still very popular with open source software developers. Many open source projects have channels on freenode or elsewhere.

      What does seem to have vanished is the days of connecting to an IRC server to pull down pirated crap (BitTorrent and p2p killed that off)

    5. Re:oh no! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I quit using IRC about 15 yrs ago because it was the same shit over and over again.

  3. predecessor? by fleabay · · Score: 1

    /me doesn't like the use of the word predecessor here.

    --
    PlanetVulkan.com
    1. Re:predecessor? by Mr.+Slippery · · Score: 1

      /me doesn't like the use of the word predecessor here.

      "A model or type of machinery or device which precedes the current one. Usually used to describe an earlier, outdated model." Seem entirely appropriate.

      --
      Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
      You cannot wash away blood with blood
  4. Incorrect headline by kevmeister · · Score: 4, Informative

    As is all too common these days, both the summary and article are right, but the headline is wrong. Jeff Kell did not invent BITNET (Because It's Time NETwork or Because It's There NETwork). BITNET was developed in the early '80s by Ira Fuchs of CUNY and Greydon Freeman, Inc. of Yale. It was an early store and forward network based on IBM protocols.

    Both the summary and article correctly credit Jeff with the invention of BITNET RELAY which was a predecessor of IRC. It was important, but was just a component of BITNET.

    --
    Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer, Retired
    1. Re:Incorrect headline by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Yo! Schmuck! Read it AGAIN and weep!

    2. Re:Incorrect headline by tmjva · · Score: 1

      When I submitted the article, it was about inventing RELAY on BITNET. Not BITNET itself. Did not mean to confuse.

      --
      Tracy Johnson
      Old fashioned text games hosted below:
      http://empire.openmpe.com/
      BT
  5. Re:Frost Pist by ArchieBunker · · Score: 1

    Dumbass trolls haven't even realized the domain expired and its a landing page.

    --
    Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
  6. Re:WHO CARES by r.freeman · · Score: 1

    So true.
    In our sad, PC world.
    And not the PC that we have instead Amiga ;)

  7. Oh, fond memories! by treczoks · · Score: 1

    Back in ye olden times, fond memories of hours lost at a green serial terminal, TALKing to peope all over the world.

    When things worked solely by agreement, i.e. if you registered your nick at some server (IIRC NICKSERV), it was yours, and nobody touched it.