Development style

• xpert mailing list established early on

  • was MIT Project Athena's largest list
  • Collaboration between MIT LCS and Athena
  • Early outside users and contributors

• Magnetic tape distribution, transitioning to Arpanet access

• Releases twice a year (academic calendar)

  • More frequent than most systems of its day
  • Culminated in serious commercial interest (e.g. Digital's workstation software, and calls for redesign), with X Version 10

• Very similar (in spirit) to current open source projects

  • The Internet was in its infancy, as were the tools