Talk:Kermit (protocol)

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Move[edit]

Anyone object to me moving this somewhere and making a dab page for here? Surely the frog is at least as famous. Morwen - Talk 16:16, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Requested move[edit]

I would suggest Kermit should be a disambiguation, and this be moved somewhere - possibly to Kermit (protocol)? Articles for the dab page: Kermit the Frog (arguably the most famous), Kermit, Texas and Kermit, West Virginia. sjorford #£@%&$?! 10:00, 14 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support, agree with Curps. -Hapsiainen 10:43, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Move complete: Kermit is now the dab page, and the protocol was moved to Kermit (protocol). --Mairi 18:12, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Origin of the name "kermit"[edit]

This article currently asserts Kermit was named for the Kermit the Frog from the Muppets. If this is so, there ought to be a reference to back it up.

On the one hand, Kermit the Frog and the Muppets were on TV in the 1970s, and kermit the protocol was written in 1981-82 at Columbia University, so time-wise, it could be true.

On the other hand:

  • The Free Online Dictionary of Computing (on which this article is based) says nothing about the origin of the name.
  • I searched Columbia University's history of kermit, and found no mention of frog or Muppet.
  • In old kermit source code, I found this:

MICRO COMPUTER FILE INTERCHANGE/KERMIT PROTOCOL. THIS VERSION IS FOR USE UNDER NOS/BE. IN CASE YOU ARE WONDERING, KERMIT STANDS FOR (K)L10 (E)RROR-FREE (R)ECIPROCAL (M)ICROPROCESSOR (I)NTERCHANGE OVER (T)TY LINES.

I would say the preponderance of the evidence is against being named for Kermit the Frog. Any other evidence? Jedwards01 01:04, 9 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]


  • A current web page at Columbia University states: The Kermit protocol and software are named after Kermit the Frog, star of the television series, The Muppet Show; the name Kermit is used by permission of Henson Associates, Inc. Let's leave it the way it is. Jedwards01 01:36, 9 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • I will risk the ire of copyright gods by quoting the entire footnote 3 from page 3 of Frank da Cruz, Kermit: A File Transfer Protocol, Digital Press, 1987, ISBN 0-932376-88-6:

3. Why? Mostly because there was a Muppets calendar on the wall when we were trying to think of a name, and Kermit is a pleasant, unassuming sort of character. But since we weren't sure whether it was OK to name our protocol after this popular television and movie star, we pretended that KERMIT was an acronym; unfortunately, we could never find a good set of words to go with the letters, as readers of some of our early source code can attest. Later, while looking through a name book for his forthcoming baby, Bill Catchings noticed that Kermit was a Celtic word for free, which is what all Kermit programs should be, and words to this effect replaced the strained acronyms in our source code (Bill's baby turned out to be a girl, so he had to name her Becky instead). When BYTE Magazine was preparing our 1984 Kermit article for publication, they suggested we contact Henson Associates Inc. for permission to say that we did indeed name the protocol after Kermit the Frog. Permission was kindly granted, and now the real story can be told. I resisted the temptation, however, to call the present work “Kermit the Book.”

I seem to recall (vaguely, and deep in my memory banks) reading years ago that Kermit the Frog was the protocol's namesake because, as the only character common to both, he acted as a sort of "bridge" between Sesame Street and the Muppet Show. But perhaps this is either misremembered or a false folk etymology. 99.140.176.218 (talk) 23:50, 25 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Bootstrapping[edit]

The bootstrapping mentioned is not booting a computer. It should be made more clear. I cannot think of a good enough way to write it, so I'masking for assistance.--Jimktrains 19:43, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Alterning the link from [[Bootstrapping (computing])] to Bootstrapping (computing)#Software Bootstrapping should cover it. --Philip Baird Shearer 13:26, 10 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

1980's?[edit]

I don't think it was used only in the 1980's -- I was using it regularly through the mid-1990's, and SLIP/PPP wasn't included as a standard part of Windows until Windows 95. It wasn't all that long ago that there were a still a fair number of funky computer and communications-line setups in various parts of the world, and Kermit was prepared to handle many of the situations where a computer running a GUI and connected to the Internet by TCP/IP was not necessarily too feasible... AnonMoos (talk) 09:19, 26 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • I do think Kermit is pretty much 1980's. The fact is that Kermit usage is strongly linked to serial ports, dial-in modems and bulletin board systems. Also that in the 1990's the BBS's got replaced by the Internet, hence Kermit replaced by SLIP and then PPP. In the 2000's dial-in modems got replaced by ADSL so Kermit was not even needed to test or setup a dialin modem. Today ("the 2010's") some desktop pc's and lots of notebooks do not have a serial port (or builtin modem) anymore. While Kermit is still in some use, usage has declined since the coming of the Internet, even in countries that have a low penetration of ADSL. The story of Kermit somewhat reflects that of the Hayes modems. Now its only use is in very specialized applications, when all other means of communication fail, such as connecting incompatible systems at the ISS in 2003. Apparently, a more recent interesting application is hard to find. PotatoEater (talk) 20:40, 23 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I would agree that its "mainstream" usage has probably been going downhill since about 1994; however, it was probably still going uphill in 1991-1992, and it didn't become positively antiquated in non-specialist use until the late 1990's, so saying that it was effectively confined to the 1980s is an unfortunate oversimplification... AnonMoos (talk) 15:06, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I'm Frank da Cruz, founder and director of the Kermit Project at Columbia University. I just happened upon this article and, worse, these comments. There is opinion and then there is objective reality. If Kermit died in the 1980s then how is it that the Kermit Project was able to sustain itself with revenue -- hard currency -- from licensing the Windows version of the software to companies, government agencies, universities, hospitals, and so forth, and to sell tens of thousands of copies of the shrinkwrapped version -- right up until today? I suggest that any Wikipedia contributor who subscribes to the picture painted in the current version of this article (2010-09-15) pay a visit to the Kermit Project website listed in the links section and read at least the page called "What Is Kermit?" and from there follow the link to the page called "Popular Misconceptions". The thing that is stuck in the 80s is this Wikipedia article and I have to say it reflects very poorly on Wikipedia. The Kermit website is huge repository of information, discussion, and software, please spend some time with it to see what has occurred in the last 25 years since you last looked. Infodom (talk) 18:43, 15 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The Tone of the Article needs improvement[edit]

I think the tone of the article is seriously misleading as it does not in any way explain that modern computer users are extremely unlikely to ever have anything to do with Kermit, directly or indirectly. When reading the article one gets the impression that it is cutting edge protocol that is seriously used for many purposes even in the 2000s.

  • Support, this article indicates that the KERMIT protocol is the 'de facto data communications standard' however I cannot find any resources that support this.
    • Possible Bias: Two of the three sources on this page come from Columbia University the creator of KERMIT.
    • Additionally the International Space Station implemented the Kermit Software Program (as stated in the referenced source) not the actual protocol, perhaps the two should be separated. J0514H (talk) 10:44, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Agree that the article could do more to establish the historical context, but here's an article which uses Kermit as an example of a de facto standard. The reference for the ISS use doesn't go into much technical detail, but it appears they used Kermit applications to allow the transfer of data between two incompatible computer systems - I'd be very surprised if this didn't involve using the Kermit protocol! Letdorf (talk) 19:33, 27 April 2009 (UTC).[reply]
I've now made a few tweaks to tone down the slightly non-NPOV phrases, use more of the past tense and add the above ref. Letdorf (talk) 20:25, 27 April 2009 (UTC).[reply]

ASCII and EBCDIC[edit]

Mention needs to be made of Kermit's use as a simple way to move ASCII files to EBCDIC and vise versa and the use of Kermit as a terminal emulator on ASCII machines such as (CP/M), and IBM PC DOS and MS DOS PCs attached to IBM mainframes. -- PBS (talk) 22:35, 21 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

FOLDOC[edit]

This edit on 30 October 2004 by an IP address introduced some paragraphs into the article and also the {{FOLDOC}}. But as the article already existed, I suggest that the paragraphs that were introduced with that edit are cited as coming from Free On-line Dictionary of Computing and then the template is removed as most of the text does not come from that source. -- PBS (talk) 15:01, 12 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Terminal emulator[edit]

The topic has "Terminal emulators" listed in the categories. However, except for a one-line mention of Kermit 95, none of the topic deals with terminal emulators. TEDickey (talk) 12:47, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Classic Kermit implementations usually included some kind of terminal emulation - see here ("In addition, many Kermit programs also make connections over various communication media and act as a terminal"). Letdorf (talk) 16:41, 11 September 2011 (UTC).[reply]
That "act as a terminal" is referring to Kermit 95 and its predecessor (not discussed in this topic) MS-DOS Kermit. My point is that if there's no substantial discussion in the topic of the terminal emulation features, it's confusing to the reader. Particularly with the long-standing confusion on usenet regarding C-Kermit TEDickey (talk) 17:11, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Lots of microcomputer implementations (Kermit-80, Kermit-65, Mac Kermit etc) provided terminal emulation (typically VT52 or VT100). C-Kermit provided terminal functionality using the native local terminal type, in much the same way as the UNIX tip or cu commands. I agree the article could have a lot more detail on the various Kermit programs, and the typical features of them. Regards, Letdorf (talk) 23:17, 11 September 2011 (UTC).[reply]
If you're going to follow that line of argument, we'll have to add scp, sftp, ftp and the like as "terminal emulators", even though that's far from the usual sense of the term. Not all communications programs are what someone would recognize as a terminal interface TEDickey (talk) 23:29, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The most ported program?[edit]

It would be interesting to know if this is the most ported user-level program? Family Guy Guy (talk) 20:45, 9 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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