WWWDaemon very early versions

Some news for fellow Web archaeologists out there..!

I came across pieces of very early source code for WWWDaemon hiding in the CERN httpd website’s /old folder [0]. The source files are in folders named V0.0, V0.1, and V0.2. They’re internally dated by TimBL to late 1990, so they seem to be much earlier than the official 0.1 and later releases noted in the official version history [1]. They may well represent the very first iterations of the server software.

Remarkably, they compile and work on old and new systems!

I’ve put buildable versions, alongside their unmodified sources, in a repo:

 https://git.sr.ht/~tweedy/WWWDaemon

As I note there, we seem to be missing WWWDaemon sources from about the official 0.1 release up through version 2.07 (i.e. 1991 through mid-1993), so if anyone has copies or leads on those, please do let me know — I’d love to get them archived as well. I’d also love to hear from anyone who has more concrete info on how to accurately date these files.

Tweedy

[0]: https://www.w3.org/Daemon/old/
[1]: https://www.w3.org/Daemon/Features.html

Received on Sunday, 5 November 2023 15:48:10 UTC