Things were also a lot more innocent in the old days. I created one of the first (if not first) comprehensive TeX archives on the internet by pointing the FTP s

Things were also a lot more innocent in the old days. I created one of the first (if not first) comprehensive TeX archives on the internet by pointing the FTP server on a math department VAX to the actual live application tree that was in use. I never asked permission to do that. Deploying software generally involved just putting stuff in the system directories. And I had open telnet access to all kinds of machines at various institutions. I can't imagine having things that open in the contemporary world.