Talk:README

what about the history

what about the history of the Readme file? how was the name chosen and why? was it always the standard or did it evolve? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.18.33.97 (talk) 3 November 2006

According to the Jargon File the name was originally an allusion to the Alice in Wonderland story.

amRadioHed 05:40, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Makes sense. "Eat me". "Drink Me". I would think readme would come from an inspiration from "Alice in Wonderland"

IViking (talk) 05:15, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

What about the first time it was seen in the wild? Any clues? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 196.210.160.157 (talk) 10:50, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Because it's within 8 characters, and therefore fits in MS-DOS, and describes its purpose. 97.71.73.46 (talk) 03:51, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

The first samples are from PDP-10 computers, where file names were often restricted to six characters. Lars Brinkhoff (talk) 07:02, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

Pixion, Inc. v. Citrix Sys., Inc., 887 F.Supp.2d 881, 891, 906 (E.D. Cal., 2012). [“ReadMe” files were commonly provided along with downloaded software in the early days of the Internet and explained what was in the software distribution. According to expert testimony, the name “ReadMe” was a play on the Alice in Wonderland story, in which Alice confronts magical treats labeled “Eat Me” and “Drink Me.”]

— Alice-in-Wonderland’s Adventures in Case Law

(my italics) Maybe someone can found out who the expert is, so we can cite them? Paradoctor (talk) 10:23, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

According to this document (see footnote 6), it's "Citrix's invalidity expert Dr. [Kevin] Jeffay". 66.96.67.66 (talk) 16:51, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

Hi, should we link

Hi, should we link the articles "Readme" and "Man_page" to each other? Seems useful as both are on documentation, but are representative of the 2 worlds (*nix and win32). Nobodyspoke 03:05, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

It is a link in see also. I assume that someone (possibly you) added that. Good job. IDK what you mean by "representative of the 2 worlds (*nix and win32)" A man page is Unixy, but README is more generic (not Windowsy). Stevebroshar (talk) 09:35, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

I came across

I came across a file called DO_NOT_DELETE.ME —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.86.126.40 (talk) 06:07, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Excellent work! Begs the question: did you delete it? ;) Stevebroshar (talk) 09:36, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

"ASCIIbetical"

Is that a real word or should it be replaced? The Sanest Mad Hatter (talk) 00:17, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

It links to a more thorough description, which is referenced. Yes, real. -- Quiddity (talk) 21:46, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

That's redonculous. No. But I love it. Stevebroshar (talk) 09:37, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

Notability of GitHub

An anonymous user deleted the section "On GitHub" last July with the message "remove promotional literature concerning non-notable proprietary vendor behavior". This broke a relative wikilink to the article section--following the link on the GitHub page labelled "README files on GitHub" is what lead me here. I see that Greenrd made the new section on the current page and linked to it from the GitHub page on 8 February 2015. No doubt that GitHub is a proprietary system, but it is also an extremely notable one: Wikipedia's GitHub page gets more than 100 edits per year. I also grant that Greenrd's original "On GitHub" section contained a lot of material not germaine to README files and that Snori did well in trimming it down last December. What remains, though, is that GitHub's treatment of README files is quite notable. This is particularly true because of its automatic conversion of the file's lightweight markup into something more readable in a web browser.

Actually, GitHub's treatment of README files is hardly unique among source-code-hosting sites and packages. All, in all, rather than delete the section, the anonymous editor should have generalized the section to describe a feature often found among providers like GitHub--or at least waited until some other editor could have arrived at this article and done the same. NoOneAsked (talk) 16:35, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

Anon user is in the wrong, but I've popped the text back, and tried to make it a little more generic - perhaps a whole section on Github was too much. The link on the GitHub page labelled "README files on GitHub" kinda sorta works even now. - Snori (talk) 06:59, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

Earliest so far, from 1973

On MIT's Incompatible Timesharing System, the files were usually called -READ- -THIS-. The first one preserved on backup tapes is 11CREF;READ THIS from April 5, 1973; evidence points to it being created by Ron Lebel of the AI lab Logo group. If you specifically want the "readme" variety, there's a SHRDLU;%READ ME by David McDonald from July 3, 1973. Starting the name with a dash or a percent makes the file appear near the top of a sorted directory listing. Lars Brinkhoff (talk) 07:04, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

Nice to know. Stevebroshar (talk) 09:38, 9 December 2025 (UTC)