In README.md I speculated that Modular Crypt Format may have been named by the authors of the Passlib Python library (Eli Collins), but that's probably not true.
That may be the introduction of the term (not the format) to the FreeBSD code, but it's not clear if it was coined by Brandon or if it was already in use elsewhere.
I don't know where the name came from, and it is probably not important to anyone, but Passlib wasn't around back then.
In README.md I speculated that Modular Crypt Format may have been named by the authors of the Passlib Python library (Eli Collins), but that's probably not true.
I happened upon this commit in the FreeBSD codebase by Brandon Gillespie dated 21 January 1999: https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd/commit/0cb1c5b095f3ccb2b3a2228a67aec0569258f62a
That may be the introduction of the term (not the format) to the FreeBSD code, but it's not clear if it was coined by Brandon or if it was already in use elsewhere.
I don't know where the name came from, and it is probably not important to anyone, but Passlib wasn't around back then.