Production work began in July 2001, and completed in December 2004. The finished product began shipping in May 2005.[3]
Although the documentary was released under the Creative CommonsAttribute-ShareAlike 2.0 License[4] and later under 3.0,[5] meaning that anyone can legally download it for free, the author has made it known that the downloadable version is only a fraction of the available material and recommends that individuals purchase the documentary DVDs.
Disc 3 also serves as a DVD-ROM which contains thousands of photographs from the 200 interviews recorded during the 4-year production of the film. All of the episodes are subtitled in English and include director's commentary tracks. The Artscene episode is the only one to include subtitles translated into Russian. All discs include hidden easter eggs.
Reception
BBS: The Documentary was well reviewed, mainly by publications within the technology space. Wired called it "a five-and-a-half-hour paean to the era when computers were named Stacy and Lisa, and tech loyalists fought bitter battles over the superiority of Ataris to Amigas".[2]Film Threat called it a "truly fascinating documentary about an increasingly obscure and obsolete technology".[6]Popular Mechanics called it a "labor of love" and said it was "the sort of thing that not everyone can digest, but is utterly fascinating to those that can".[3]
Since its release, the film has been cited by multiple academic works on the topic of computing history and internet culture.[7][8][9][10][11][12]
