I ran a bbs system in High School and it set me on a path for web development because I understood computers and learned Linux commands using IRC that played well into using Apache, Perl and other Linux things from the 1996 web era. Personally I ran Renegade BBS software which had its origins in stolen Telegard BBS pascal source code.
http://software.bbsdocumentary.com/AAA/AAA/CBBS/thoughts.txt
http://software.bbsdocumentary.com/AAA/AAA/CBBS/