[ANN] Open-Source HOTLINE for macOS 14 (Sonoma)!

[OpenXTalkPaul]

YAAASSSSS I said HOTLINE!!! ICYDK, Hotline was a popular BBS-over-IP software from 30 years ago, this is a NEW open-source build of Hotline that actually REQUIRES macOS 14 (Sonoma) or, for mobile, iOS 17+ to run.

https://github.com/mierau/hotline/releases

Hotline (and the very similar KDX) was (still is I guess) one of those protocols like Usenet that were/are sort of semi-decentralized precursors to what we now call 'Social Media'.

Hotline combined FTP-like File-sharing, IRC-like public or private chatrooms, and dial-up BBS-like message-boards into one protocol. There's three components to the protocol, a Server Hosting App, the User Client App, and a Tracker App that could list servers that are online. Clients can connect to servers directly and the client would also connect to any trackers you've added. Someone running the server app could optionally registered their HL sites address with one or more Trackers, then new random users could find your server and connect as guest users. Guest users could browse only the sections of the servers the 'sys-op' made accessible from guest accounts using the settings part of the server app.

I thought HL was pretty revolutionary at the time (early 1990s). That was when I downloaded my very first mp3 file (around 1993). What happened to HL was that the young dev that created HL (Aussie Adam Hinkley, IIRC) had a legal dispute with the company that formed around HL. Then a few years later basically these sort of protocols became less and less popular when decentralized file-sharing 'swarming' protocols like LimeWire, Kazaa, and BitTorrent appeared, plus wider access to broadband internet and YouTube arrived... oh and then 'Social Media' ruined the internet.

[tperry2x]

I like this, and that's great for MacOS users. You know what I'm going to say. Hotline was available for Windows too. So where's the Windows (and linux) version?

To be honest, Hotline runs in wine absolutely fine, and can be made into a self-contained wrapper (including for at least MacOS Catalina). I stopped running Hotline back in the day when file sizes grew over 2GB for most files, and hotline had a hard limit of 2GB file transfers.

I switched to KDX back then (did the same person who made Hotline make KDX?) - KDX wasn't free - it would put up a nag screen, but would remain functional. I occasionally use KDX to transfer between computers on a local intranet network. (It's also easy to start a KDX and hotline server via a wine instance too).

But good to see the hotline source being reimplemented nonetheless. I just wish they had a nod towards making it multi-platform. It would have been the ideal thing to make the protocol a C++ function and have the front end developed in OXT, in fact - that almost is worth considering as a fork.

[OpenXTalkPaul]

But good to see the hotline source being reimplemented nonetheless. I just wish they had a nod towards making it multi-platform. It would have been the ideal thing to make the protocol a C++ function and have the front end developed in OXT, in fact - that almost is worth considering as a fork.

I stumbled across it while going down the 'vintage computing' rabbit hole, it is open source so it could be ported I suppose but it's written in swift. There's some PDFs in that repo that contain documentation about the protocol.

With all the big (anti)social media sycophants bowing down and kissing the ring, and also replacing humans moderation with AI in the process, I'm thinking it's high time I delete my Fecebook account. The notion of doing that always has me thinking back to the way we'd connected to content on friends computers, and chatting over slow as molasses dialup back I the day, aka 'the good ol' days'!

The original Hotline, I believe was Mac-only (FAT-Carbon) a first but was ported to Windows later. IIRC the story goes that as HL became popular there was some legal dispute over a sale of 'Hotline', the dev, who was very young age of 17yrs old, never gave Hotline Communications Ltd., the company that had been formed around the software, the actual source code. There was a legal case. By then there were already clones HL apps (I remember an HL Client 'Pitbull' was popular) that used the same protocol or some using variations on the same idea (Caracho was Mac only IIRC). Then KDX appeared some time later from a mystery dev who many believed was in fact the original author of Hotline, Adam Hinkley ('Hinks').

Wikipedia list a few open source and/or semi-modern 'HL' apps using enhanced version of the protocol (which probably eliminates those 1990s era limits)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotline_Communications

[OpenXTalkPaul]

I remember thinking that could be implemented in HyperCard.

I believe there's a few retro sites that still run HL an/or KDX servers.