UUCP (Unix-to-Unix Copy) is a suite of computer programs and protocols allowing remote execution of commands and transfer of s, email and netnews between computers.
A command named is one of the programs in the suite; it provides a user interface for requesting file copy operations. The UUCP suite also includes (user interface for remote command execution), (the communication program that performs the file transfers), (reports statistics on recent activity), (execute commands sent from remote machines), and (reports the UUCP name of the local system). Some versions of the suite include / (convert 8-bit binary files to 7-bit text format and vice versa).
Although UUCP was originally developed on Unix in the 1970s and 1980s, and is most closely associated with Unix-like systems, UUCP implementations exist for several non-Unix-like operating systems, including DOS, OS/2, OpenVMS (for VAX hardware only), AmigaOS, classic Mac OS, and even CP/M.
UUCP was originally written at AT&T Bell Laboratories by Mike Lesk. By 1978 it was in use on 82 UNIX machines inside the Bell system, primarily for software distribution. It was released in 1979 as part of Version 7 Unix.
The first UUCP emails from the U.S. arrived in the United Kingdom in 1979 and email between the UK, the Netherlands and Denmark started in 1980, becoming a regular service via EUnet in 1982.
The original UUCP was rewritten by AT&T researchers Peter Honeyman, David A. Nowitz, and Brian E. Redman around 1983. The rewrite is referred to as HDB or HoneyDanBer uucp, which was later enhanced, bug fixed, and repackaged as BNU UUCP ("Basic Network Utilities").
Each of these versions was distributed as proprietary software, which inspired Ian Lance Taylor to write a new free software version from scratch in 1991.
Taylor UUCP was released under the GNU General Public License. Taylor UUCP addressed security holes which allowed some of the original network worms to remotely execute unexpected shell commands.