The CoSy conferencing system from the University of Guelph is now available as open-source software, thanks to the generosity of the University, CSP Internet, and Alastair Mayer, the original author.
The original CoSy code from 1984 can be downloaded as a gzipped tar: CoSy Classic
Alastair Mayer has generously contributed his somewhat updated version, called TCOSY, and has imported it to the cvs repository, where it is the current default branch. This version has been extensively reworked to bring it up to modern coding standards (including POSIX compliance), to make it compatible with a particular proprietary implementation, and to provide additional features.
Thanks to the efforts of David Betz, a custom NNTP server is available which provides newsreader access to a TCoSy message base.
If you want to join the TCOSY development effort, please send email to John Ralls with "CoSy Developer Request" as a subject line. You must first be registered with SourceForge, and must include your SourceForge ID in the email.
Visit the CoSy project page for the latest project status or Download the latest versions.
CoSy has been used at hundreds of university and corporate sites around the world since 1985. It also powered some of the early online discussion services including BIX (Byte Information Exchange), CIX (a european service), and JIX (Japanese Information Exchange). It is a text-only threaded and moderated conferencing system organized by conferences and topics.
We'd like to hear about implementations and problems! Please send John Ralls mail with your questions and stories.