BBC Betsie: Perl program to create an automatic text-only website version (1999)
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Re: BBC Betsie: Perl program to create an automatic text-only website version (1999)
#2I posted this as I think it’s fun to look back at how some “early” web stuff was done and a bit of a trip down memory lane on a Saturday morning.
When I was experimenting making websites as a teenager 20 (ouch!) years ago I would love to investigate how other sites worked. The BBC had this little “Text Only” link on all pages of the site that redirected to a version stripped of all images and tables (tables were used for layout, much like HN) with high contrast and large text for the visually impaired and screen readers. Brilliantly ahead of its time thinking about accessibility, which I suppose is the BBCs mandate.
The url to these pages were prefixed with something like /cgi-bin/betsie.pl?url= and the bottom of the pages liked to this page I have submitted (sadly now only in the Internet Archive), it’s affectively a proxy written in Perl that transforms each page on the fly. I remember setting Betsie up on my own site, which no one visited because who would visit the site of a 14yo.
I believe Betsy was still in use till about 2010. You can read more about it here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2012/02/accessibilit...
Source code:
https://web.archive.org/web/20000824120750/http://www.bbc.co...
Re: BBC Betsie: Perl program to create an automatic text-only website version (1999)
#3> the BBC is not responsible for the content of external websites
Wow, they still use this exact disclaimer 23 years later, to the letter.
(I wonder why they need it...)
Re: BBC Betsie: Perl program to create an automatic text-only website version (1999)
#4I posted this as I think it’s fun to look back at how some “early” web stuff was done and a bit of a trip down memory lane on a Saturday morning. When I was experimenting making websites as a teenager 20 (ouch!) years ago I would love to investigate how other sites worked. The BBC had this little “Text Only” link on all pages of the site that redirected to a version stripped of all images and tables (tables were used…
Great flashback. I used Betsie on several projects in the early 2000s.
It was quite useful when you were stuck with baroque HTML generation code you were unable to modify.
The BBC produce a bunch of interesting tools for web development, another being the layout comparison tool, Wraith:
Re: BBC Betsie: Perl program to create an automatic text-only website version (1999)
#5First thing I notice: the license is horrible.
Even GNU recommends liberal licenses for snippets with less than 300 lines (and allows for commercial use anyway!): https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html " What if the work is not very long? (#WhatIfWorkIsShort)
If a whole software package contains very little code—less than 300 lines is the benchmark we use—you may as well use a lax permissive license for it, rather than a copyleft license like the GNU GPL. (Unless, that is, the code is specially important.) We recommend the Apache License 2.0 for such cases.While LOCs poorly reflect the effort made, in this case a less anal-retentive approach would have opened up a long-term contribution to societies at large. Considering that the BBC was mainly finances by quasi-public money it's a shame that it was opted for a license with an unnecessary special case (NC).
Re: BBC Betsie: Perl program to create an automatic text-only website version (1999)
#6> the BBC is not responsible for the content of external websites Wow, they still use this exact disclaimer 23 years later, to the letter. (I wonder why they need it...)
They've used it from day one, more or less.
Disclaimers like this used to be a little more common on the web, as I recall.
But the BBC is a national broadcaster and news organisation. I think you have to keep in mind the volume, nature and often bad-faith unfairness of the kinds of complaints it receives. It's not difficult to imagine the "I was on the BBC website and two clicks later I was looking at bestiality material" complaints, tabloid news stories, extreme right wing/left wing/nationalist politicians etc.
A disclaimer like that shoots down that entire range of complaints and was probably constructed with Ofcom's agreement for that reason. (They are the relevant regulator.)
If you google "BBC disclaimer" you'll see there's a bunch of them they have had to construct over the years to fend off bad faith complaints from all sorts of angles.
(And one or two good-faith complaints that stem from their peculiar position, like the "Other listings magazines are available" disclaimer they have/had to make when they mention the commercial TV/Radio listings magazine, The Radio Times, that is produced under licence. That disclaimer has entered into popular culture and is the basis of a running joke among BBC presenters at times when a contributor inadvertently mentions or places a product. "Of course, other are available.")
NPR is in a similar situation, I imagine -- having to put disclaimers into their content to protect themselves from the kind of bad faith criticism that will get brought up the next time their funding is being discussed.
Re: BBC Betsie: Perl program to create an automatic text-only website version (1999)
#7First thing I notice: the license is horrible. Even GNU recommends liberal licenses for snippets with less than 300 lines (and allows for commercial use anyway!): https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html " What if the work is not very long? (#WhatIfWorkIsShort) If a whole software package contains very little code—less than 300 lines is the benchmark we use—you may as well use a lax permissive license for it, rather…
> Considering that the BBC was mainly finances by quasi-public money it's a shame that it was opted for a license with an unnecessary special case (NC).
Unfortunatly this is why it has to be licensed in that way. Having the BBC release code for free to commercial use is often deemed to be a "market distortion", and thus not allowed to happen, as such the lawyers will often err on the side of caution.
Also remember this was 1999, 5 years before Apache License 2.0 was approved.
Re: BBC Betsie: Perl program to create an automatic text-only website version (1999)
#8Wow, it only includes Socket.
You could make this a bit simpler nowadays with some libs like Mojo and LWP.
Re: BBC Betsie: Perl program to create an automatic text-only website version (1999)
#9First thing I notice: the license is horrible. Even GNU recommends liberal licenses for snippets with less than 300 lines (and allows for commercial use anyway!): https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html " What if the work is not very long? (#WhatIfWorkIsShort) If a whole software package contains very little code—less than 300 lines is the benchmark we use—you may as well use a lax permissive license for it, rather…
> Considering that the BBC was mainly finances by quasi-public money it's a shame that it was opted for a license with an unnecessary special case (NC). Unfortunatly this is why it has to be licensed in that way. Having the BBC release code for free to commercial use is often deemed to be a "market distortion", and thus not allowed to happen, as such the lawyers will often err on the side of caution. Also remember th…
> Having the BBC release code for free to commercial use is often deemed to be a "market distortion", and thus not allowed to happen, as such the lawyers will often err on the side of caution.
People outside the UK: this isn't just theoretical, please look at the history of BBC Micro. That's how the corporation was structured at the time, and it should be read with this in mind. There are a lot of very fine pieces of BBC software that is stricter than that and can't be legally released to the public, for example most broadcasting software like its MPEG2 encoder aren't available because it'll disadvantage broadcast equipment manufacturers (although for the MPEG2 encoder FFMPEG's is now better). This is also not specific to the BBC: before its disbandment, the Independent Broadcasting Authority (which owned half of the transmission network in the UK, the other half was previously BBC but both were privatized and now owned by Arqiva) required to do product development and research by law but can't commercialise those research by themselves.
Re: BBC Betsie: Perl program to create an automatic text-only website version (1999)
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Considering that the BBC was mainly finances by quasi-public money it's a shame that it was opted for a license with an unnecessary special case (NC). Unfortunatly this is why it has to be licensed in that way. Having the BBC release code for free to commercial use is often deemed to be a "market distortion", and thus not allowed to happen, as such the lawyers will often err on the side of caution. Also remember th…
> Having the BBC release code for free to commercial use is often deemed to be a "market distortion", and thus not allowed to happen, as such the lawyers will often err on the side of caution. People outside the UK: this isn't just theoretical, please look at the history of BBC Micro. That's how the corporation was structured at the time, and it should be read with this in mind. There are a lot of very fine pieces of…
Very true. I've mentioned in another comment the "Other are available" disclaimer, that used to be tacked onto any content mentioning The Radio Times or any of the BBC Gardening/Good Food/Sport products from BBC Enterprises or licensees.
It's now a running joke, but the disclaimer about The Radio Times really did emerge out of a market distortion legal complaint by a competitor, TV Times.
These market distortion complaints were often timed around BBC Charter renewals to give the BBC's critics in Parliament (generally on the Tory side) ammunition. But at the same time, it's also the era of the Radio One Roadshow, the BBC Micro as you say, the emergence of the VHS box set, etc., etc., and the BBC did need to be required not to distort markets accidentally as it expanded commercially (which ironically it felt encouraged to do in order to find future non-licence-fee revenue)