About

About the OpenTG Project This is an open-source project to recreate the Telegard BBS from scratch into a modern, internet ready, and standardized system.

What are the Goals?

• Set new standards for BBS software.
• Recreate the feel and configureability of Telegard.
• Design using a modular architecture for easy extendability.
• Build using modern open-standards (language, compilers, libraries, etc).
• Make Internet Ready on both IPv4 and IPv6, and in theory any protocol stack.
• Integrate with current internet Mail Gateways as well as support some legacy BBS networks such as FidoNET.
• When possible, provide compatability with legacy systems or a clear migration path.

What was Telegard? Telegard is BBS software developed in the late 80′s and 90′s by a team of developers as part of the dial-up modem era. See the official Telegard website (http://www.telegard.net) or the WikiPedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegard) .

Why not use the original source?

• Telegard was written at a time when DOS and OS/2 were the primary operating systems.
• There was no built-in support for Internet protocols (internet wasn’t mainstream).
• The original code was written using older Tool Chains and had a mixture of Turbo Pascal, C++, and Assembly.
• Although never confirmed, the original base code was considered to be borrowed unofficially from other BBS software of the era.
• Older code for Telegard v2.5 that was leaked out was known to contain backdoors. This source has been floating around a long time and cannot be trusted.
• The final maintainer of the software, Tim Strike, made vast improvements to the software, however:

According to Tim Strike, Telegard’s last known maintainer, development has ceased and will not be taken back up. According to a post Tim made on Outpost BBS in Fidonet’s TG_SUPPORT echo in 2005:[2] ‚ I’m not sure where Telegard can go from here ‚ I’m not sure that the PC that has all the source code can boot, nor am I sure that I have all the compilers and tool chains that would be required to revitalize the project. I also know that I don’t have the time, or the will, to continue the project myself. I don’t remember what state it was left in, as time and age have not likely been kind to the project. Off the top of my head, I don’t know what code can be open-sourced, and wouldn’t move the project that way without the consent of the other authors of the project (and yes, as much as I rewrote there are still contributions and copyrights that are owned by other individuals). I realize this leaves it open ended, and I suspect for the next little while that’s where it’ll have to stay with my apologies‚ and with your understanding.