Squish is both the name of a FidoNet

FidoNet

FidoNet is a worldwide computer network that is used for communication between bulletin board systems. It was most popular in the early to mid 1990s, prior to the introduction of easy and affordable access to the Internet...

 mail tossing application originally designed for DOS

DOS

DOS, short for "Disk Operating System", is an acronym for several closely related operating systems that dominated the IBM PC compatible market between 1981 and 1995, or until about 2000 if one includes the partially DOS-based Microsoft Windows versions 95, 98, and Millennium Edition.Related...

 and OS/2

OS/2

OS/2 is a computer operating system, initially created by Microsoft and IBM, then later developed by IBM exclusively. The name stands for "Operating System/2," because it was introduced as part of the same generation change release as IBM's "Personal System/2 " line of second-generation personal...

, and the name of the primary mail storage format in which this application stores FidoNet and other local BBS

Bulletin board system

A Bulletin Board System, or BBS, is a computer system running software that allows users to connect and log in to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, a user can perform functions such as uploading and downloading software and data, reading news and bulletins, and exchanging...

 messages. Before Squish, open storage formats for FidoNet and Bulletin Board messages were relatively slow and inefficient. The primary functions of the Squish application in a FidoNet system are to:

• Unpack incoming mail archives.
• Examine and sort incoming mail, and either:
  1. Store it in the appropriate local message bases for later reading by a BBS user or a FidoNet mail reading application.
  2. Place it into an outgoing mail archive, if addressed to another system.
• Examine mail being sent from a FidoNet system, and attach routing information to each message.
• Archive outgoing messages appropriately, for archives to be later transferred by independent FidoNet mailer software.

Squish was originally developed by Scott J. Dudley through his company, Lanius Corporation, in conjunction with his Maximus

Maximus (BBS)

Maximus is a bulletin board system, originally developed by Scott J. Dudley through his company, Lanius Corporation. The software was first written and released for both MS-DOS and OS/2, with later versions supporting 32-bit Windows operating systems. The MS-DOS version interfaced with the serial...

 BBS software. Squish existed as a separate application, however, and its open specifications resulted in it often being used within other FidoNet and BBS-related systems.

In 2002, the source code

Source code

In computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...

 for Squish was released under the GNU General Public License

GNU General Public License

The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....

, in the same code-base as the Maximus BBS software. It has since been ported to run under Win32, Linux

Linux

Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

, and other Unix-like

Unix-like

A Unix-like operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, while not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification....

operating systems.

External links

• Maximus Sourceforge Project Page - includes Squish.
• Husky Sourceforge Project Page - includes SMAPI, a extended Squish Message base API.