The Jargon File is a glossary of hacker slang. See also List of glossaries A glossary is a list of terms in a particular domain of knowledge with the definitions for those terms Slang is the use of highly informal Words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's Dialect or Language. The original Jargon File was a collection of hacker slang from technical cultures such as the MIT AI Lab, the Stanford AI Lab (SAIL), and others of the old ARPANET AI/LISP/PDP-10 communities, including Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Carnegie Mellon University, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute. The Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (also known as Stanford AI Lab or SAIL) is the Artificial intelligence (AI research laboratory of The ARPANET ( Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) developed by ARPA of the United States Department of Defense, was the world's first operational Lisp (or LISP) is a family of Computer Programming languages with a long history and a distinctive fully parenthesized syntax The PDP-10 was a Mainframe computer manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC from the late 1960s on the name stands for "Programmed Data Processor Carnegie Mellon University (also known as CMU) is a private Research University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United

Contents 1 1975 to 1983 2 1983 to 1990 3 1990 and later 4 Notes 5 References 6 External links

1975 to 1983

The Jargon File (hereinafter referred to as "jargon-1" or "the File") was made by Raphael Finkel at Stanford in 1975. Raphael Finkel (born 1951 is an American computer scientist and a professor at the University of Kentucky. Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly known as Stanford University or simply Stanford, is a private Research university located in Year 1975 ( MCMLXXV) was a Common year starting on Wednesday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. From this time until the plug was finally pulled on the SAIL computer in 1991, the File was named "AIWORD. The Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (also known as Stanford AI Lab or SAIL) is the Artificial intelligence (AI research laboratory of Year 1991 ( MCMXCI) was a Common year starting on Tuesday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian Calendar. RFUP" or "AIWORD. RFDOC". Some terms, such as frob and some senses of moby, are believed to date back to the early 1960s from the Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT. The term Frob has typically been used to refer to any small device or object (usually hand-sized which can be manipulated or frobbed. The 1960s decade refers to the years from the beginning of 1960 to the end of 1969 The Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC is a student organization at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT and one of the most famous model railroad clubs in the The revisions of jargon-1 were all unnumbered and may be collectively considered "version 1".

In 1976, Mark Crispin, having seen an announcement about the File on the SAIL computer, FTPed a copy of the File to MIT. Year 1976 ( MCMLXXVI) was a Leap year starting on Thursday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. Mark Crispin (born 1956 is best known as the father of the IMAP protocol having invented it in 1985 during his time at the Stanford Knowledge Systems Laboratory He noticed that it was hardly restricted to "AI words" and so stored the file on his directory, named as "AI:MRC;SAIL JARGON". However, jargon is a misnomer; the editors of the file have always tried to avoid the inclusion of strict computer jargon (i. For Wikipedia jargon see WikipediaGlossary. For hacker slang see Jargon File. e. , technical terms), favoring instead slang used by hackers.

The file was quickly renamed "JARGON >" (the '>' suffix triggered versioning under ITS), because a flurry of enhancements were made by Mark Crispin and Guy Steele, Who generated multiple revisions. ITS, the Incompatible Timesharing System (named in comparison with the Compatible Time-Sharing System also in use at MIT was an early revolutionary and influential Guy Lewis Steele Jr, (ˈstiːl as in steel) also known as "The Great Quux" and GLS (glis is an American Computer scientist In the late 1970s, definitions were added by members of the dynamic modeling group at MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science. Contributors included Marc Blank, Dave Lebling, and Tim Anderson (the original authors of Zork). Marc Blank is an American Computer game designer and Game programmer. P David Lebling (born 1949 was an Interactive fiction Game designer, or Implementor, at Infocom. Tim Anderson is a Computer programmer who helped create the Adventure game Zork, one of the first works of Interactive fiction and Zork was one of the first Interactive fiction Computer games and an early descendant of Colossal Cave Adventure.

Raphael Finkel dropped out of active participation shortly thereafter and Don Woods became the SAIL contact for the File (which was subsequently kept in duplicate at SAIL and MIT, with periodic resynchronizations). This is about the programmer For the meteorologist see Don Woods (meteorologist and football player see Don Woods (football player.

The File expanded by fits and starts until 1983. Richard Stallman was prominent among the contributors, adding many MIT and ITS-related coinages. Richard Matthew Stallman (born March 16 1953 often abbreviated " rms " is an American software freedom activist ITS, the Incompatible Timesharing System (named in comparison with the Compatible Time-Sharing System also in use at MIT was an early revolutionary and influential

In 1981, a hacker named Charles Spurgeon got a large chunk of the File published in Stewart Brand's CoEvolution Quarterly (issue 29, pages 26–35) with illustrations by Phil Wadler and Guy Steele (including a couple of the Crunchly cartoons). Year 1981 ( MCMLXXXI) was a Common year starting on Thursday (link displays the 1981 Stewart Brand (born December 14, 1938 in Rockford Illinois) is an Author, editor, and creator of The Whole Earth Catalog CoEvolution Quarterly (1974 - 1985 is a descendant of Stewart Brand 's Whole Earth Catalog. Philip Wadler is a Computer scientist well-known for his contributions to Programming language design and Type theory. This appears to have been the File's first paper publication.

A late version of jargon-1, expanded with commentary for the mass market, was edited by Guy Steele into a book published in 1983 as The Hacker's Dictionary (Harper & Row CN 1082, ISBN 0-06-091082-8). The other jargon-1 editors (Raphael Finkel, Don Woods, and Mark Crispin) contributed to this revision, as did Richard M. Stallman and Geoff Goodfellow. Richard Matthew Stallman (born March 16 1953 often abbreviated " rms " is an American software freedom activist Geoff Goodfellow is an Arpanet wireless email visionary He came up with the idea in 1982 and published it in an article titled "Electronic Mail for People on the Move" This book (now out of print) is hereafter referred to as "Steele-1983" and those six as the Steele-1983 coauthors. Out of print refers to an item typically a book (see Out of print books) but can include any print or visual media or Sound recording, that is no longer being published

1983 to 1990

Shortly after the publication of Steele-1983, the File effectively stopped growing and changing. Originally, this was due to a desire to freeze the file temporarily to ease the production of Steele-1983, but external conditions caused the "temporary" freeze to become permanent.

The AI Lab culture had been hit hard in the late 1970s by funding cuts and the resulting administrative decision to use vendor-supported hardware and associated proprietary software instead of homebrew whenever possible. This article is about the Decade 1970-1979 For the Year 1970 see 1970. Proprietary software is Computer software on which the producer has set restrictions on use private modification copying, or republishing. At MIT, most AI work had turned to dedicated Lisp machines. Lisp machines were general-purpose Computers designed (usually through hardware support to efficiently run Lisp as their main software language. At the same time, the commercialization of AI technology lured some of the AI Lab's best and brightest away to startups along the Route 128 strip in Massachusetts and out West in Silicon Valley. Route 128, also known as the Yankee Division Highway (for the 26th Infantry Division) and originally the Circumferential Highway, is a partial For the valley nicknamed "Silicone Valley" see San Fernando Valley. The startups built LISP machines for MIT; the central MIT-AI computer became a TWENEX system rather than a host for the AI hackers' beloved ITS. Lisp (or LISP) is a family of Computer Programming languages with a long history and a distinctive fully parenthesized syntax The TOPS-20 Operating system by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC was the second proprietary OS for the PDP-10.

The Stanford AI Lab had effectively ceased to exist by 1980, although the SAIL computer continued as a computer science department resource until 1991. Year 1980 ( MCMLXXX) was a Leap year starting on Tuesday (link displays the 1980 Gregorian calendar) Year 1991 ( MCMXCI) was a Common year starting on Tuesday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian Calendar. Stanford became a major TWENEX site, at one point operating more than a dozen TOPS-20 systems, but by the mid-1980s most of the interesting software work was being done on the emerging BSD Unix standard.

In May 1983, the PDP-10-centered cultures that had nourished the File were dealt a death-blow by the cancellation of the Jupiter project at DEC. Year 1983 ( MCMLXXXIII) was a Common year starting on Saturday (link displays the 1983 Gregorian calendar) The PDP-10 was a Mainframe computer manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC from the late 1960s on the name stands for "Programmed Data Processor The Jupiter project was to be a successor to Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC 's PDP-10 model Digital Equipment Corporation was a pioneering American company in the Computer industry The File's compilers, already dispersed, moved on to other things. Steele-1983 was partly a monument to what its authors thought was a dying tradition; no one involved realized at the time just how wide its influence was to be.

As mentioned in some editions:^[1]

By the mid-1980s the File's content was dated, but the legend that had grown up around it never quite died out. The book, and softcopies obtained off the ARPANET, circulated even in cultures far removed from MIT's; the content exerted a strong and continuing influence on hackish slang and humor. The ARPANET ( Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) developed by ARPA of the United States Department of Defense, was the world's first operational Even as the advent of the microcomputer and other trends fueled a tremendous expansion of hackerdom, the File (and related materials like the AI Koans in Appendix A) came to be seen as a sort of sacred epic, a hacker-culture Matter of Britain chronicling the heroic exploits of the Knights of the Lab. Hacker culture, and especially the Artificial intelligence community at MIT, have invented a number of humorous short stories dubbed hacker koans The Matter of Britain is a name given collectively to the Legends that concern the Celtic and legendary History of Great Britain, especially those The pace of change in hackerdom at large accelerated tremendously, but the Jargon File passed from living document to icon and remained essentially untouched for seven years.

1990 and later

A new revision was begun in 1990, which contained nearly the entire text of a late version of jargon-1 (a few obsolete PDP-10-related entries were dropped after consultation with the editors of Steele-1983). Year 1990 ( MCMXC) was a Common year starting on Monday (link displays the 1990 Gregorian calendar) It merged in about 80% of the Steele-1983 text, omitting some framing material and a very few entries introduced in Steele-1983 that are now only of historical interest.

The new version cast a wider net than the old Jargon File; its aim was to cover not just AI or PDP-10 hacker culture but all of the technical computing cultures in which the true hacker-nature is manifested. More than half of the entries now derive from Usenet and represent jargon now current in the C and Unix communities, but special efforts have been made to collect jargon from other cultures including IBM PC programmers, Amiga fans, Mac enthusiasts, and even the IBM mainframe world. Usenet, a Portmanteau of "user" and "network" is a world-wide distributed Internet discussion system tags please moot on the talk page first! --> In Computing, C is a general-purpose cross-platform block structured Unix (officially trademarked as UNIX, sometimes also written as Unix with Small caps) is a computer The Amiga is a family of Personal computers originally developed by Amiga Corporation. Macintosh, commonly nicknamed Mac is a Brand name which covers several lines of Personal computers designed developed and marketed by Apple Inc

Eric S. Raymond maintains the new File with assistance from Guy Steele, and is the credited editor of the print version, The New Hacker's Dictionary. Eric Steven Raymond (born December 4 1957 often referred to as ESR, is a Computer programmer, author and Open source software advocate Some of the changes made under his watch have been controversial; early critics accused Raymond of unfairly changing the file's focus to the Unix hacker culture instead of the older hacker cultures where the Jargon File originated. Raymond has responded by saying that the nature of hacking had changed and the Jargon File should report on hacker culture, and not attempt to enshrine it. ^[2] More recently, Raymond has been accused of adding terms to the Jargon File that appear to have been used primarily by himself, and of altering the file to reflect his own political views. ^[3]

As of 2008, the last revision is 4.4.7 of 29 December 2003. 2008 ( MMVIII) is the current year in accordance with the Gregorian calendar, a Leap year that started on Tuesday of the Common Events 1170 - Thomas Becket: Thomas Becket Archbishop of Canterbury is assassinated inside Canterbury Cathedral by followers of King Henry II Year 2003 ( MMIII) was a Common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar.

Notes

References

• Guy L. Steele, Eric S. Raymond (1996). Eric Steven Raymond (born December 4 1957 often referred to as ESR, is a Computer programmer, author and Open source software advocate in (ed. ): The New Hacker's Dictionary, 3rd edition, MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-68092-0.  

External links

• The original (unmaintained) Jargon File
• The current Jargon File and its revision history
• Archive of the file
• Jargon Database
• Random Jargon File quote

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