LambdaMOO

LambdaMOO is an online community of the variety called a MOO. It is the oldest MOO today.

LambdaMOO was founded in late 1990 or early 1991 by Pavel Curtis at Xerox PARC. Now hosted in the state of Washington, it is operated and administered entirely on a volunteer basis. Guests are allowed, and membership is free to anyone with an e-mail address.

LambdaMOO gained some notoriety when Julian Dibbell wrote a book called My Tiny Life describing his experiences there. Over its history, LambdaMOO has been highly influential in the examination of virtual-world social issues.

History

LambdaMOO has its roots in the 1978–1980 work by Roy Trubshaw and Richard Bartle to create and expand the concept of Multi-User Dungeon (MUD) – virtual communities. Around 1987–1988, the expansion of the global internet allowed more users to experience the MUD. Pavel Curtis at Xerox Parc noted that they were "almost exclusively for recreational purposes." Curtis determined to explore whether the MUD could be non-recreational. He developed LambdaMOO software to run on the LambdaMOO server, which implements the MOO programming language. This software was subsequently made available to the public. Several starter databases, known as cores, are available for MOOs; LambdaMOO itself uses the LambdaCore database. The "Lambda" name is from Curtis's own username on earlier MUD systems.