⁵The Beachboard was a type of online community at UB running on a crude bulletin board type system called BULLETIN written for OpenVMS. I call it crude as the software did not take full advantage of the operating system’s methods of things such as error handling, but it did handle things like interpreting commands typed in using system library routines. BULLETIN was able to do the things it needed to do with minimal fuss. In such an environment with limited budgets, educational institutions must take advantage of free software like BULLETIN and utilize them to their best benefit. Even I on a limited computing budget must take advantage of free software, meaning free to use, copy or distribute it as seen fit.