History question on non-mining nodes.

[Kraeol]

What date or Bitcoin version was it when non-mining nodes became a thing?

Or was it always possible to run the client just as a full node without generating Bitcoin?

[ranochigo]

You could always run a node without enabling mining. To enable mining, all that they have to do was to put setgenerate to true and it would start mining.

[Kraeol]

Oh great thanks for the reply.  I was starting to get unsure about it as many in the forked communities have been trying to spread this idea that the option to run a non-mining node was created in a version after Satoshi left.

I know a few times Satoshi made reference to two types of nodes.  One he called "network node" and the other was "client node".  Would I be right in saying that a client node refers to just running the client as a node(full or lightweight) with generating turned off?

[odolvlobo]

Oh great thanks for the reply.  I was starting to get unsure about it as many in the forked communities have been trying to spread this idea that the option to run a non-mining node was created in a version after Satoshi left.

I know a few times Satoshi made reference to two types of nodes.  One he called "network node" and the other was "client node".  Would I be right in saying that a client node refers to just running the client as a node(full or lightweight) with generating turned off?

The mining code was eventually removed because it was no longer being used by anyone. The "client" node being referred to was the SPV type node.