What is the deal with the ibiblio, etc., name changes?
I didn’t really know the answer, either, so I put the question to ibiblio’s Director, Paul Jones, and he was kind enough to take the time to explain all. “Here’s the short: Pre-1992 we were a collection of projects including a bbs service called launchpad.unc.edu. In 1992 we received funding and support from Sun Microcomputing Systems for a joint project to be called sunsite.unc.edu or Sun Software, Information and Technology Exchange. In 1998 Sun decided to revisit our funding and support arrangement and we mutually decided that conditions were not favorable for continuing on as sunsite so we became Metalab to reflect our new collection of sponsors instead of one major one. In 2000 we entered into a partnership with the Center for the Public Domain (known as the Red Hat Center at that time). to highlight this major new involvement, we took a new name (at their suggestion) of ibiblio.org today that’s who we are, but we still answer to sunsite.unc.edu and metalab.unc.edu.” Wait, there’s
