The ccr project was started by Dave Ackley in late 1989 at Bell Communications Research lab (Bellcore) in Morristown, NJ, to investigate the possibilities of peer-to-peer interaction and collaboration via computer networks.

Most details of ccr0.0, the earliest version of the system, have now been lost. It was designed and implemented principally in 1989 and tested around Bellcore into the summer of 1990. ccr0.0 was implemented in emacs-lisp, using emacs for display and user interactions, and a C program run as an emacs subprocess for TCP/IP communications with other ccr processes.

This site deals with ccr0.1, the second major revision of the system, in primary research and development from 1992-2004. Design notes from v0.3+ are in the tree; the early design notes associated with v0.1= through v0.2.7= (~4MB text) exist but are currently unavailable.