Sub-sections

Introduction

News

Description

License

Staff

Download

Mailing lists

Contact



Newline@Savannah



[Version française]



Newline

Introduction

The Newline project intent is to provide a real Internet-based alternative to the traditionnal BBS, that recently lost their audience. BBS were separate servers, accessed by modems, that mainly provided three types of services to a dedicated community : download of files, chat and written distant communication (netmail/echomail).

Newline takes what was good on traditionnal BBS, and adapt it to use the advantages of Internet. The lack of anonymity and the privileged contact between the users and their SysOp (the administrator of a BBS) makes the strong of a BBS community, while Internet provides instantaneity and lowered costs.

Newline makes also intensive use of existing technologies and standards, like the FTP protocol for file transfers or the NNTP protocol for newsreading. The objective is not to reinvent everything, but to adapt what already exists to fit the needs of a real Internet BBS.

There are two types of Newline packages : the server side packages, and the client side package. The server side packages can be used separately or as a whole (chat/news/file-transfer); the news and file-transfer sub-servers being compatible respectively with FTP and NNTP clients, they can even be used as "traditionnal" FTP and NNTP servers. The client side package allows the end-user to fully use the possibilities of a Newline Internet BBS.

One other major feature of Newline is the intensive use of a MySQL server for data storing, like message boards, allowing for example the SysOp to give a web front-end to his discussion groups.