Talk:WWIV

''The switch to C++ also allowed for Bell to implement a rather flexible BBS network, allowing all WWIV boards to link to each other. Bell also took the opportunity to try and make some small amount of money back for his efforts. Starting with the C++ version, those who paid their $50.00 registration fees received copies of the source code to modify and recompile. The ability to modify WWIV as a sysop saw fit was one of its selling points - something that RBBS, Opus, Genesis, and many of the other BBS programs of the era failed to provide, and was a selling point that was not lost on the thousands of WWIV sysops, who had begun to regard Bell as a cross between a father figure and a revolutionary.''

The Sourcecode to RBBS was freely available on many BBSs, both in assembler and pascal. --m4

''Both programs were reportedly extensively rewritten by their respective "owners" so as to no longer contain any WWIV source, but following the expose of their creator's lack of integrity many of their supporters switched over to WWIV. While both Telegard and Renegade continued to be sold and supported, all BBS' running these programs were permanently banned from all WWIV networks, and the ban remained in effect throughout the remainder of the BBS era.''

Uhhhh.... Renegade and Telegard were free programs. Anyone who paid money for a copy of either of them got hosed. Secondly, there were tons of Telegard/Renegade boards on WWiVnet... all you had to do was setup VBBS as a door program. Alot of people did that. --m4

And when they were discovered, they were banned from WWIVnet, ICEnet, WWIVLink, and FILEnet. I worked with Filo as part of the policing team to make sure those running either were prevented from doing so. This was Wayne Bell's decision, and one we all supported as both Renegade and Telegard were stolen from WWIV source. - Loup Garou

I am pretty sure that they weren't banned from IceNET. I know that there were a few telegard boards in IceNET and Jim Nunn didn't really care. Dave 05:30, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

I edited the bit about Telegard and Renegard in WWIVnet. The orginal article said that they were banned in all WWIV based networks. I know that was not true in IceNET. Considering I am Louie (IceNET 6@1) and was Jim's cosysop (Jim being IceNET 1@1) I think I would be in a position to know. --Dave 01:58, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

That is a good call. I have never removed anyone from FILEnet on the basis of anyone telling me they were running a certain BBS software. However I also doubt either would be able to run the FILEnet software anyway. Oh, and Hi Louie. I'm Deltigar, 1@1.FILEnet. Dennis M. Myers 01:23, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

I can confirm that WWIV ran under DESQVIEW. My system ("Reality") operated that way for several years on an 80386 system running DESQVIEW over DOS. The BBS ran in one window and my user space ran in another. 209.119.129.34 (talk) 19:18, 10 September 2014 (UTC) (davewa)

Citation Needed
"As the Internet began to rise in popularity and availability a new method of packaging WWIV messages for transport by internet email was developed. The test network (PPPnet) was a great success." This comment has been flagged as requiring a citation, however I know of nowhere that would have bothered to publish any sort of reference except the active discussions at the time. I think the absolute success of the testing can be evidenced in how the resulting technology became, and as far as I know, remains at the heart of WWIV networking over the internet via email. Any ideas on how to handle this? Dennis M. Myers (talk) 17:51, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

I would honestly just take it down if there is any doubt. Someone really went overboard with "citation needed" in this article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bradrules (talk • contribs) 20:40, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Linker Question
I think its time to seriously discuss the impact that Linker had on multinetworking in WWIV. Keep in mind Linker actually was programmed to respond back to Jayson Cowan the exact number of users on all networks using linker and what versions used. At the hight of WWIV Multinetworking linker had over 1000 unique users. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Deathmolor (talk • contribs) 00:06, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

In addition Linker had file sending capability and because WWIV was the largest distributed network next to the internet linker was indeed the first p2p used over a distributed network. I think its rather rude and completely ridiculous to try and revert something that had such a long lasting impact. Apex Netup software was also registered by over 50 WWIV based networks. The impact of this software is far more reaching then you can ever know Benny Hill. Yes I am indeed the person who created all this and i am still making popular software in the industry of p2p and distributed networks and i would prefer if people didn't try to revert facts and history. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Deathmolor (talk • contribs) 00:19, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

After the Great Linker Network Update controversy, FLink was developed and promulgated as a standard part of FILEnet. As FILEnet became the wwiv-based network backbone, those who were concerned about Linker's hidden functions switched to FLink. -Deltigar... Dennis M. Myers (talk) 01:33, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Source code is available for everyone to see on Sourceforge some functions may have been hidden or just thoughtlessly omitted but Intentions were always good. Deathmolor (talk) 13:16, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Max Users Question
I seem to recall a figure closer to 2300 for several months at the peak of WWIVnet. Can anyone provide an answer to this, or call Wayne bell and ask him? Dennis M. Myers 01:40, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I was thinking the same thing myself when I read that. I really do not remember as it was a very long time ago.  Those were the good ole days.  btw - I am Benny Hill, former SysOp of The Funny Farm (East), Support BBS, Group 6 coordinator at the time. Pparazorback 06:03, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I am Deltigar, formerly 1@1.FILEnet Dennis M. Myers (talk) 01:33, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Two current owners listed.
"It is now owned by Frank Reid, who runs Eagle's Dare BBS near Washington, DC." and "WWIV is owned by Dean Nash aka Trader Jack his bbs is bbs.wwiv.com"

––– Frank Reid runs a support site, Dean Nash is the owner. Mroblivious1bmf 02:20, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

You forgot Bert Glanstron. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.73.3.169 (talk) 18:18, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Name?
Where did the name come from? We always called it 'World War 4' when we called it anything but 'the software'... --StarChaser Tyger 10:01, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Wayne wrote it when he was very young. It did indeed stand for World War Four. Over time, the name just became WWIV. Dennis M. Myers (talk) 01:40, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

BBSers around my town always just pronounced the acronym, to rhyme with "give". My first board was a WWIV board in 1991. I miss those days! —Preceding unsigned comment added by SquareWave (talk • contribs) 01:06, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

I always called it W - W - eye - vee back when I ran one in the early 90s, I don't remember any of my friends call it world war 4 at the time. I don't even think it even occurred to me that's what it meant. Remingtonhill1 (talk) 01:59, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Dab
Could anyone explain me the need for dab to World War IV in this article? WWIV is not described in World War nor it is a well-known concept, AFAIK. Materialscientist (talk) 06:18, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
 * WW IV is mentioned in the section Subsequent world wars, which also contains Einstein's famous quote. AFAIK the phrase is used to describe not only a hypothetical future war, but also current conflicts (though which conflict differs between speakers).Sjö (talk) 08:03, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
 * And, as I said in a recent edit summary, someone who looks for info about a fourth world war is likely to put WW IV in the search box. According to WP:ASTONISH they should be able to find what info we have on that.Sjö (talk) 09:17, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't see the disambiguation as problematic to the article, but I suspect the repeated reversions from the IP user are based on an historical precept that WWIV software was not World War IV in the long-form. In its heyday, there was a camp which adamantly rejected that long-form moniker, but there were certainly enough System Operators who did use the term.  Regardless, the repeated reverts are certainly unnecessary.  Do we know if "World War IV" disambiguates to this article, too? Fcreid (talk) 09:42, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
 * The IP user in question has a history of years of deleting links to World War IV articles on several language versions and from different Costa Rica-based IP:s. From time to time these IP:s are blocked, but the user returns some time later from a different IP. I have never seen the user question the existance of articles about WW IV or text mentioning WW IV in other articles, but the user stubbornly removes any links.Sjö (talk) 09:52, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
 * As a former WWIV SysOp and Support BBS Coordinator (Benny Hill), I confirm Fcreid's comment regarding the moniker. The whole reason for Disambiguation links is to assist the user in finding what they are looking for.  Im my opinion, it is more likely that someone who does a search for WWIV on Wikipedia is more likely to be searching for information about a World War than the WWIV BBS software created by Wayne Bell.  Not too many people remember the old BBS days.  It is not unreasonable to have this dab link to assist those users searching for info on a war as it does not take anything at all away from this article. -Pparazorback (talk) 12:52, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Why would anyone look for an article about something that doesn't exist? Xnacional (talk) 05:12, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
 * The WWIV term exists in mass amounts on Google. Materialscientist (talk) 05:20, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Maybe, but not in reality. Xnacional (talk) 05:24, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Millions of search terms do not exist in reality, but are still valid search terms. There is an apparent consensus against your removal, please respect that. Materialscientist (talk) 05:39, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
 * How long will Xnacional and its IP socks conduct this tiresome edit war? Is it an idée fixe? Antique Rose &mdash; Drop me a line  22:42, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Turbo Pascal
This line is not correct: One of Turbo Pascal's strong features was the ability to easily "chain" sub-programs and external modules into memory only as required; as the average available RAM for a program to load and run in MS-DOS was 384 kilobytes,[citation needed] this became a very important feature.

Turbo Pascal v3 produced .COM and .CHN files that were limited to 64k each. Even the WWIV code was split into two parts, causing a long load process while you swapped in the other half (my vague recollection is that the files area was split from the discussion area). The stock WWIV code was right up against the limit, too - I distinctly remember how easy it was to run over when modding the code. I basically taught myself programming by working on that codebase in the mid-80s. And now I feel very, very old.Lhoriman (talk) 08:00, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 28 December 2015
The official website is wwivbbs.org not wwivbbs.com. please change external link wwivbbs.com to wwivbbs.org

Rushfanwwiv (talk) 06:52, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done /wia 🎄 /tlk  18:35, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 12 May 2016
Modify the following under WWIV's current status (adding the part about WWIVnet being online along with the host information - the last 3 lines of the code below).


 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done for now: The section looks to be a collection of external links. I think the section needs cleanup before the addition suggested is made. Also, per your username, you might have a conflict of interest problem. Thanks for your understanding. — Andy W.  ( talk  · ctb) 07:38, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

Current status
Although BBSes have been eclipsed by the World Wide Web and the Internet, WWIV and other popular software still exist and are supported today. One popular WWIV support site is owned by Frank Reid, who runs Eagle's Dare BBS near Washington, DC.

The current 5.0 release has enhanced Internet gateway capabilities such as telnet accessibility, and other modern features.

WWIV is now owned by Dean Nash aka Trader Jack; his BBS is at [telnet://bbs.wwiv.com bbs.wwiv.com].

WWIV uses the Synchronet FOSSIL driver and is released under the Apache Software License.

WWIVnet is alive and functioning today using updates made to the network software by RushFan to support the BinkP protocol. The 1@1 (Network Coordinator) for WWIVnet is Weatherman (Mark Hofmann) - from Weather Station BBS. [telnet://bbs.weather-station.org Weather Station BBS].

Weatherman-Mark (talk) 13:20, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 26 February 2017
Can you please replace the 1st 3 links under external links with these 4 because WWIV has had a couple of releases since 5.0 (5.1 and 5.2, with 5.3 under development). I also added the link to the documentation which was not available before when these were added.

Thank you.


 * WWIV SysOp Wiki Rushfan2112 (talk) 00:43, 26 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Yellow check.svg Partly done: I did not do the GitHub Wiki external link due to the fact the github page is linked and the wiki can be accessed easily from there. Ⓩⓟⓟⓘⓧ Talk 19:03, 2 March 2017 (UTC)
 * WWIV SysOp Wiki Rushfan2112 (talk) 00:43, 26 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Yellow check.svg Partly done: I did not do the GitHub Wiki external link due to the fact the github page is linked and the wiki can be accessed easily from there. Ⓩⓟⓟⓘⓧ Talk 19:03, 2 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Yellow check.svg Partly done: I did not do the GitHub Wiki external link due to the fact the github page is linked and the wiki can be accessed easily from there. Ⓩⓟⓟⓘⓧ Talk 19:03, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Surprised the FBI hacking of the encrypted messages resulting in Bell having to testify in court is not listed. Tech from The Tech Shop in NW Indiana on WWIVnet, closed down when the Internet or WWW started. Byron Eastridge aka Tech — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.179.132.87 (talk) 04:10, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

lol
Nevertheless, source code availability was not lost on the thousands of WWIV sysops, ″who had begun to regard Bell as a cross between a father figure and a revolutionary.″ Remingtonhill1 (talk) 22:02, 16 October 2020 (UTC)


 * His source taught me C. TehSp00k (talk) 07:54, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

FIITAnet

 * https://www.cavebbs.com/
 * Benj Edwards
 * ....0mtwb9gd5wx (talk) 03:54, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
 * ....0mtwb9gd5wx (talk) 03:59, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
 * ....0mtwb9gd5wx (talk) 03:59, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 26 July 2023
bbs.wwiv.com no longer resolves in DNS. It's reference should be updated. wwiv.com resolves, but it is parked. TehSp00k (talk) 02:56, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate.  — Paper9oll  (🔔 • 📝)  07:23, 26 July 2023 (UTC)