PIS Minecraft was born way back in 2010. I first read about Minecraft in a news article and then a series of "journals" from a game journalist chronicling their adventures in this new game. It sounded neat, and was only 10 bucks at the time, so I grabbed a copy. When I found out it could be played online I almost immediately spun up a server, calling it PIS Minecraft (the PIS stands for Programmers in Space, an already old in-joke between a friend and I from when we worked together in the mid-late 90s). I don't remember the name of the first player, but I do remember how cool it was - we built a little wooded crap shack by the beach, just near 0,0,0. It's long gone, but there's a dirt house around the same area now.

Why are you releasing this again?
In 2020 - around the 10th anniversary - I dug up the old world files and released a public, spectator only, server for former players to connect to. It took a bit of digging to find any of the original crew, but we gathered on one of my Discord servers and I think everyone enjoyed the trip back in time. It's now been 15ish years since I first spun up a server, and I was motivated to release it again, only in a playable form this time.