OpenBSD pioneered anonymous CVS, which allows anyone to extract the full source tree for any version of OpenBSD at any time - no tarball downloads, no user accounts needed.
In the Fall of 1995 when we started our own open source operating system project called OpenBSD, we decided to use CVS to manage the OpenBSD source tree. Based on our experiences with the previous open source project we were involved with, we recognized the inherent conflict between trying to maintain an open environment while maintaining a private CVS source repository that only privileged users could access. To resolve this conflict we created Anonymous CVS — a mechanism that lets anonymous Internet users access a source repository without compromising its security.
The ability to view how the source code has changed over time, in any open source project, is something we take for granted nowadays.
OpenBSD continues to use AnonCVS to this day.
Details:
- Opening The Source Repository With Anonymous CVS
- cvs man page
- AnonCVS webpage with mirrors
- Browse source code online