Free-net

Other services often included Usenet newsgroups, chat rooms, IRC, telnet, and archives of community information, delivered either with text-based Gopher software or later the World-Wide Web.

The word mark Free-Net was a registered trademark of the National Public Telecomputing Network (NPTN), founded in 1989 by Tom Grundner at Case Western Reserve University.

The development of Internet access with cheaper and faster connections, and the advent of the World-Wide Web made the original free-net community concept obsolete.

Free-nets have always been locally governed, so interpretation of their mission to remove barriers to access and provide a forum for community information, as well as services offered, can vary widely.

As text-based Internet became less popular, some of the original free-nets have made available PPP dialup and more recently DSL services, as a revenue generating mechanism, with some now transitioning into the community wireless movement.