This page lists known BBS projects, both active and inactive, and is a work in progress. If you spot something that should be added, edited etc. please contact the webmaster.

ENiGMA½ BBS is authored by Bryan Ashby aka NuSkooler. The project began in October 2015, driven through a lack of diversity in the BBS scene and no modern open source solutions being available.

ENiGMA½ is written in Node.js, and has a very active development community with other developers contributing to the ENiGMA codebase and multiple boards spun up.

Features:

• Multi platform — Anywhere Node.js runs likely works (known to work under Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, OS X and Windows)
• Unlimited multi node support (for all those BBS “callers”!)
• Highly customizable via HJSON based configuration, menus, and themes in addition to JavaScript based mods
• MCI support for lightbars, toggles, input areas, and so on plus many other other bells and whistles
• Telnet, SSH, and both secure and non-secure WebSocket access built in! Additional servers are easy to implement
• CP437 and UTF-8 output
• SyncTERM style font and baud emulation support. Display PC/DOS and Amiga style artwork as it's intended! In general, ANSI-BBS / cterm.txt / bansi.txt are followed for expected BBS behavior.
• Full SAUCE support.
• Renegade style pipe color codes.
• SQLite storage of users, message areas, etc.
• Strong PBKDF2 backed password encryption.
• Support for 2-Factor Authentication with One-Time-Passwords
• Door support including common dropfile formats for legacy DOS doors. Built in BBSLink, DoorParty, Exodus and CombatNet support
• Structured Bunyan logging
• Message networks with FidoNet Type Network (FTN) + BinkleyTerm Style Outbound (BSO) message import/export. Messages Bases can also be exposed via Gopher, or NNTP
• Gazelle inspired File Bases including fast fully indexed full text search (FTS), #tags, and HTTP(S) temporary download URLs using a built in web server. Legacy X/Y/Z modem also supported
• Upload processor supporting FILE_ID.DIZ and NFO extraction, year estimation, and more
• ANSI support in the Full Screen Editor (FSE), file descriptions, etc.
• Expandable achievement system — BBSing gamified
• A remote accessible Waiting For Caller (WFC)

• ENiGMA½ BBS
• ENiGMA½ BBS (Docs)
• ENiGMA½ BBS (GitHub)

Inactive Project

Written by Andrew Pamment (apam) Magicka BBS is not being actively developed but bug fixes are still updated. The author is now developing Talisman BBS.

Magicka BBS is a free opensource BBS system for Linux/macOS/FreeBSD, other operating systems such as NetBSD and OpenBSD may work. Magicka is known to run on x86_64, arm and aarch64 platforms.

Features:

• Telnet and SSH servers, optional http server.
• Lua scripting.
• Door support via socket inheritance and STDIO redirection.
• Internal Zmodem for file transfers.
• FTN message base support.
• Bluewave offline mail.
• TIC file processing.
• BSD Licensed

• Magicka BBS

MBSE BBS is a fully FTN-capable ANSI BBS package including a mailer (ifcico clone), BinkD daemon, mail tosser, TIC processor, filefind, and other utilities allowing access via modem and the Internet using telnet, ssh, http and ftp.

The software was written by Michiel Broek with a desire by the author to have a system that met his needs and not wanting to run shareware software any more. The first version appeared in 1998 with the first public release available from September 1999.

Broek ceased development in August 2013 but others have carried on with the project. The current MBSE Development Team is Andrew Leary (ajleary), Michael Dillon (gsvalore), and Sean Dennis (digimaus).

Features:

• Tested to run under 64-bit Slackware and Devuan GNU/Linux. Runs under 64-bit FreeBSD 13-STABLE
• Supports full configurable ANSI menus, multiple languages, standard file transfer protocols, native GNU/Linux doors, DOS doors using DOSemu, and BlueWave and QWK offline mail
• The mailer supports FTS-0001, YooHoo/2U2, EMSI protocols over modem, TCP/IP IPv4 and IPv6 IFC and BinkP protocols. Zedzap, Zmodem, Telink and Hydra file transfer protocols
• Full FTN mail support, including automatic routing for hub and host systems
• Internal mail format is JAM© message base
• Full tic file support, including extended TIC files

• MBSE BBS (Sourceforge)
• MBSE BBS (Docs)
• MBSE BBS (Michiel Broek)

Mystic BBS was conceived around 1995 and first released to the public in 1997 after the author James Coyle aka g00r00 became frustrated with the lack of customization available with Renegade, and the lack of stability in many more flexible software packages.

It is a popular BBS software for those who share a common interest in ANSI art and BBS modding. With the fall of MS-DOS and the decline of BBSes in general, Mystic released an OS/2 and Windows 32 native version in 1998. Mystic was the first of the non-commerical MS-DOS based BBS softwares to integrate directly with the Telnet protocol. It also went on to release a native Linux version in 1999, and the first to introduce a standardized platform for DOOR games across all 4 operating systems.

In 2011, Mystic removed its DOS version, added a native Mac OSX version, and went open source for several years. The author has worked hard to better integrate with Internet protocols. It now has internal Telnet, RLOGIN, SSH, NNTP, POP3, SMTP, FTP and BINKP servers.

In early 2015, Mystic introduced a stable release for Raspberry Pi with 1.10 and went closed source again. Mystic now provides the only integrated BBS and echomail solution for the Raspberry Pi (ARM Linux) and OS-X (Macintosh) platforms. The project is still being developed in Free Pascal by its original author.

Features:

• Telnet,rlogin,ssh,ftp,nntp,http,pop/smtp servers
• BinkP/ftp mailer/tosser with Area/FileFix
• QWK/QWKE Networking via FTP transmission
• Event-based menuing system w/ lightbars
• Powerful language/theme/prompt system
• Pascal and Python scripting languages
• JAM message bases w/ QWKE offmail mail
• Msg editor w/ inline ANSI & spell check
• Lightbar Sysop-reader-like msg reading
• Long file names, internal X/Y/Zmodem
• 99-line file description & FILE_ID.DIZ
• DOS CP437 and UTF8 character translation
• Many DOS DOOR formats and 32-bit DOOR32

• mysticbbs.com
• Mystic BBS (Wiki)

xx

xx

Written by Andrew Pamment (apam) Talisman is a telnet style bulletin board system for Linux & Windows. It is a system that mixes the best bits of his previous BBS systems (Magicka BBS / Titan BBS). Talisman is opensource and licensed under the GNU GPLv3.

Features:

• Squish Message bases with FTN support via HPT & Binkd
• Door32.sys, door.sys, chain.txt dropfile support for Doors
• Using INI & TOML configuration formats
• Works on Windows 10 and Linux
• IP Blocklist / Passlist support, with auto blocking
• Configurable security level time outs & time limits
• File Conferences / Areas, External Protocols & Archivers
• SSH Support with automatic key generation
• QWK-E & Bluewave offline mail
• Private Email Support
• LUA Scripting
• Support for Terminal Sizes greater than 80×25
• Built in Full Screen Editor, with option of External (QuickBBS) Editor
• Native FTN, WWIVnet and QWK networking support

• talismanbbs.com
• Talisman BBS (Docs)
• Talisman BBS (GitLab)

Abandoned Project

Written by Andrew Pamment (apam) Titan BBS was an experimental BBS written in C++ for Linux and Windows. It utilized parts of C++17 found in Visual Studio 2019 (and recent versions of Visual Studio 2017) and GCC 8+. On Linux CMake was used to configure.

Titan used sqlite3 for messages, user bases, file bases etc. It came with it's own FTN message tosser TitanFTN. Titan also relied on third party utilities for some features. SEXYZ for file transfers and InfoZIP for archiving.

• Titan BBS - Installation, configuration etc.
• Titan BBS (GitLab)

WWIV is computer bulletin board system (BBS) originally written in Basic, ported to Pascal, C and finally C++. WWIV v5 is Open Source released under the Apache License version v2.0.

Features:

• Drop-in compatible with 4.3 or later
• 32-bit Win32 version
• 32-bit and 64-bit Linux version
• Telnet/SSH Server with blocklisting support
• Internal X/Y/Z-Modem protocol support
• Native QWK support
• Native WWIVnet networking included
• Native FidoNet (FTN) networking support
• DOOR32.SYS support
• Works with Netfoss, SynchroNet FOSSIL driver or DOSBOX/DOSEMU for door support

• wwivbbs.org
• WWIV (Docs)
• WWIV (GitHub)

Abandoned Project

Written by Jeff Quast and Johannes Lundberg in Python, x/84 was an experimental python 2 Telnet (and SSH) BBS. The primary purpose of x/84 was to provide a server framework for building environments that emulate the feeling of an era that predates the world wide web. The project is Open Source.