DECUS - History

History

DECUS was the Digital Equipment Computer Users' Society, a users' group for Digital Equipment Corporation computers. Members included companies and organizations who purchased DEC equipment; many members were application programmers who wrote code for DEC machines or system programmers who managed DEC systems. DECUS was founded in 1961.

DECUS was legally a part of Digital Equipment Corporation and subsidized by it, but it was run by volunteers. DEC staff were not eligible to join DECUS, but were allowed (and encouraged) to participate in DECUS activities. DEC in turn relied on DECUS as an important channel of communication with its customers.

The DECUS U.S. Chapter conducted technical conferences at various locations, and ran other operations like Local User Groups (LUGs) and Special Interest Groups. Chapters in other nations did likewise. DECUS also promoted the open exchange of user-developed software, largely via magnetic tape.

DECUS played a critical role in the development of computer games in North America in the 1970s. The pioneering titles Adventure by Will Crowther; Baseball, Dungeon and Star Trek by Don Daglow and Hunt the Wumpus by Gregory Yob provided a foundation for the games industry. One of the first real-time interactive multi-user games, MTrek (MultiTrek), was also distributed on DECUS tapes. Major commercial game titles including Zork were first popularized by DECUS.

In the 1990s, DECUS played a significant role in integration of isolated post-Soviet scientific, technology and business communities into worldwide community.

In 1998, Compaq acquired Digital, and DECUS became a Compaq user group.

In 2000, the DECUS U.S. Chapter incorporated as the independent user group Encompass.

In 2002, Hewlett-Packard acquired Compaq, and DECUS became an HP User Society.

In 2008, the HP user communities Encompass, ITUG and HP Interex EMEA consolidated to form Connect Worldwide.