About Squidge.org

Squidge.org started as a place for mailing lists in 1994, and was one of the very first fandom webhosts on the Internet.  While the World Wide Web was in its infancy, Squidge.org was there to offer homes for people in fandom.  And it has continued that mission in the years - DECADES - since!

The History of Squidge.ORG

Squidge.ORG came about in 1994, when the Internet was still not quite caught on for most folks. A group of folks, spun off of the main X-Files mailing list because of their fetish for actor David Duchovny, went in search of a home of their own. After trying a couple of mailing list hosts, the list (known as The Duchovniks) was left in the hands of Walter Hopgood, one of the only male Duchovniks at the time.

Being a bit of a geek, Walter went out and secured a domain name that "fit" the group well, squidge.org. The first machine was an old laptop computer running OS/2 and a free list-server piece of software. Other lists were requested, and Squidge.ORG outgrew it's initial computer. In Spring, 1995, Squidge.ORG became an early adopter of Linux, running the Slackware version of the product, over a dialup line. The server was connected up partially, the dialup connection going up and down many times during the day, to process and route email.

The success of Squidge.ORG was showing, and it's popularity grew wildly. Soon, it was running ten mailing lists, and upgraded the connection to a full-time dialup connection in the Fall of 1995. The system was now running an updated version of Slackware, with the SmartList add on to ProcMail as it's mailing list management software piece.

As the popularity of the Internet grew, so did Squidge.ORG. With the implementation of DSL in it's "backyard", Walter upgraded Squidge.ORG's connection to a true, full time digital connection in early 1996. And with a full digital connection, came Squidge.ORG's foray into website and email hosting. Many slash sites needed a home, thanks to the TOS'ing (Terms Of Service) that many large website hosting providers decided to implement. The number of hosting clients Squidge.ORG helped grew greatly.

With the large number of mailing lists and websites being hosted, Squidge.ORG went through some more growing. With the popularity of web interfaces, Squidge.ORG abandoned open-source software for its mailing lists, and purchased a software package called Lyris. Though adequate, it required more resources than normal software systems. When a free alternative that was open-source became available in 2000 (Sympa), Squidge.ORG upgraded to it, along with an integrated "one server" approach for webhosting and mailing list software.

Squidge.ORG Today

As of this writing, Squidge.org exists in multiple ways.  Currently everything is hosted in a personal datacenter on a symmetrical gigabit Fiber Internet connection.  The servers and services are:

• Squidge.org - The primary home for webhosting, email account and mailing list hosting, and IRC server hosting


• Squidge Images - Free image hosting from Squidge.org


• SquidgeWorld Archive - The former home of Peja's Wonderful World of Makebelieve, and soon to be the host for other abandoned archives. SquidgeWorld Archive (SqWA) is a clone of The OTW's software that runs AO3.


• Various other servers - Multiple servers that run behind the scenes that are responsible for things like database servers, etc.

Squidge.ORG In the Future

As of April 2023, Squidge.org has received IRS 501c3 non-profit status from the Internal Revenue Service.  This means that Squidge.org is officially a non-profit, and will soon be able to take donations.

Why put this here?  Because now that Squidge.org is a non-profit, we also have a Board.  This means Squidge.org is no longer "just one person."  Squidge.org is a group of people in fandom that are here for fandom.  And if something happens to one of us, Squidge.org will continue to remain.

 

The "Terms of Service" for Squidge.org

Here's information regarding "Terms of Service" and the services here at Squidge.org INC, a non-profit 501c3 organization.

**NOTE: Terms Of Service Update, April 2023**

Squidge.org holds no rights to someone else's information -- we will just host it. The content is solely owned by the list/email/website owner, and we lay no claim to it. The only exception is when someone approaches Squidge.org to add their copyrighted terms to the public legal page. One group, the DDTeens, had some problems with people misrepresenting their name and asked if we could copyright it, so we put together a page saying "The following terms are copyrighted by Squidge Production Facilitators", etc. You can see it at Squidge.ORG Legal Information.

Squidge.org is really lenient -- Hell, Walter, the person who started Squidge.org is a fan, too. Walter, via Squidge.org, has been giving back to the community by hosting chats, mailing lists, websites, and email accounts.

There are four rules

• No "snuff" flick type stuff


• No kiddie porn


• Within the context of fandom, whether a fanfiction story on SquidgeWorld Archive or a personal homepage, no links to Patreon, GoFundMe, or the like that asks for money to pay/support for fanfiction.


• No sharing of your username and password with others.

Other than that, you can have whatever you want on your website/mailing list, etc.

So anyway, there you have it on the "Terms of Service."  No big ugly corporate BS, just regular usage stuff.  And if you have a question, please contact the webmaster.

Added in 2002: Please note -- If you have a UNIX/Web/Mail account through squidge.org, that account and the information about it (the login & password) are yours and yours alone. This means that you are NOT to share your account information with others. If you do, and we find out, we'll be forced to terminate your account for security reasons. Now it's fine if you and another person/some people are using one account for website creation and maintenance, etc. However, you may NOT be allowed to give your login & password out to others for the purpose of you and them sharing files, etc.

Added September 21st, 2007: We have been asked to clarify what “kiddie porn” means. First of all, the artistic writing in fandoms, such as Harry Potter, is not considered kiddie porn. According to a court ruling in the United States, it is more the actual image that is the problem. Now as for artists who create pieces of work that are in like the Harry Potter or such fandoms, the law is specific. The piece of work must have artistic intent. As an artist doing the work, you are putting forth artistic intent. Thus, for those pages that you have artistic intent work on, we suggest you put a disclaimer stating your artistic value of the work, and that objectors should redirect to Google.com or something.

Squidge.org has added image hosting and a robust story archive hosting package, both of which are via open-source software. These TOS apply.

So there ya go!