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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><title>BBS</title><link rel="stylesheet" href="../../jargon.css" type="text/css"/><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.61.0"/><link rel="home" href="../index.html" title="The Jargon File"/><link rel="up" href="../B.html" title="B"/><link rel="previous" href="bboard.html" title="bboard"/><link rel="next" href="BCPL.html" title="BCPL"/></head><body><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">BBS</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="bboard.html">Prev</a> </td><th width="60%" align="center">B</th><td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="BCPL.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr/></div><dt><a id="BBS"/><dt xmlns="" id="BBS"><b>BBS</b>: <span xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" class="pronunciation">/B·B·S/</span>, <span xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" class="grammar">n.</span></dt></dt><dd><p> [common; abbreviation, &#8220;<span class="quote">Bulletin Board System</span>&#8221;] An
electronic bulletin board system; that is, a message database where people
can log in and leave broadcast messages for others grouped (typically) into
<a href="../T/topic-group.html"><i class="glossterm">topic group</i></a>s. The term was especially applied to
the thousands of local BBS systems that operated during the pre-Internet
microcomputer era of roughly 1980 to 1995, typically run by amateurs for
fun out of their homes on MS-DOS boxes with a single modem line each. Fans
of Usenet and Internet or the big commercial timesharing bboards such as
CompuServe and GEnie tended to consider local BBSes the low-rent district
of the hacker culture, but they served a valuable function by knitting
together lots of hackers and users in the personal-micro world who would
otherwise have been unable to exchange code at all. Post-Internet, BBSs
are likely to be local newsgroups on an ISP; efficiency has increased but a
certain flavor has been lost. See also
<a href="bboard.html"><i class="glossterm">bboard</i></a>.</p></dd><div class="navfooter"><hr/><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="bboard.html">Prev</a> </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="../B.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="BCPL.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">bboard </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="../index.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> BCPL</td></tr></table></div></body></html>