Formosa BBS (or NSYSU Formosa BBS) was one of the earliest, if not the first,
telnet
Telnet is an application protocol used on the Internet or local area network to provide a bidirectional interactive text-oriented communication facility using a virtual terminal connection. User data is interspersed in-band with Telnet control i ...
-based
Bulletin board system
A bulletin board system (BBS), also called computer bulletin board service (CBBS), is a computer server running software that allows users to connect to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, the user can perform functions such as ...
s (BBS) to have
Chinese language
Chinese (, especially when referring to written Chinese) is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in Greater China. About 1.3 billion people (or approximately 16% of the wor ...
capability. Work used from creating Formosa was combined with the open source Pirate BBS to create Eagle BBS from which the more user friendly Phoenix BBS was derived. The open source Phoenix BBS was the parent of the widely used Firebird BBS and Maple BBS.
Taiwanese BBS software
Formosa BBS
Formosa BBS established in October 1992 by Professor Nien-Hsing Chen of the
National Sun Yat-sen University
National Sun Yat-sen University (NSYSU; ) is a public research-intensive university renowned as an official think tank scholars' community, located in Sizihwan, Kaohsiung, Taiwan. NSYSU is listed as one of six national research universities, ...
(NSYSU), was one of the earliest, if not the first,
telnet
Telnet is an application protocol used on the Internet or local area network to provide a bidirectional interactive text-oriented communication facility using a virtual terminal connection. User data is interspersed in-band with Telnet control i ...
-based
Bulletin board system
A bulletin board system (BBS), also called computer bulletin board service (CBBS), is a computer server running software that allows users to connect to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, the user can perform functions such as ...
s (BBS) to have
Chinese language
Chinese (, especially when referring to written Chinese) is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in Greater China. About 1.3 billion people (or approximately 16% of the wor ...
capability. The objective was to provide a means for professors, universities and students to communicate.
Eagle BBS
In developing the Formosa BBS Chinese language interface Professor Chen used code from the open source Pirate BBS. The developed code was returned to the Pirate BBS developers who created Eagle BBS as an open source BBS with a Chinese language interface.
Phoenix BBS
Phoenix BBS was development of the Eagle BBS but incorporated a more user-friendly interface.
Firebird BBS
Firebird BBS is one of two main
telnet
Telnet is an application protocol used on the Internet or local area network to provide a bidirectional interactive text-oriented communication facility using a virtual terminal connection. User data is interspersed in-band with Telnet control i ...
-based
Bulletin board system
A bulletin board system (BBS), also called computer bulletin board service (CBBS), is a computer server running software that allows users to connect to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, the user can perform functions such as ...
s developed in
Taiwan
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...
.
It is also gained popularity in
mainland China
"Mainland China" is a geopolitical term defined as the territory governed by the People's Republic of China (including islands like Hainan or Chongming), excluding dependent territories of the PRC, and other territories within Greater China. ...
and was adopted by most sites there.
Several derived BBS systems are based on its source code.
Some popular sites like
SMTH BBS and
HKiBBS are using the derived system of the Firebird.
Maple BBS
Maple BBS is one of two main
telnet
Telnet is an application protocol used on the Internet or local area network to provide a bidirectional interactive text-oriented communication facility using a virtual terminal connection. User data is interspersed in-band with Telnet control i ...
-based
Bulletin board system
A bulletin board system (BBS), also called computer bulletin board service (CBBS), is a computer server running software that allows users to connect to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, the user can perform functions such as ...
s developed in
Taiwan
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...
, the other being Firebird BBS.
IN Taiwan most BBS adopted Maple or its descendants in preference to Firebird BBS.
Several BBS systems are based on its source code.
In Taiwan Maple BBS and its descendants generally gained market share from FireBird BBS.
References
See also
*
Chinese input methods for computers
Bulletin board system software
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