zKillboard

A killboard for a single game

zKillboard is a killboard for EVE Online, the massively multiplayer online role playing game. A killboard in this context is a public record of combat: when a ship is destroyed, the resulting killmail is collected and presented so players, corporations, and alliances can review what happened. The README frames zKillboard as the premier such board for EVE Online, and it includes a small piece of history, the site was originally called killwhore.com until the EVE Online forums censored the word whore, after which the name changed. The project is hosted at zkillboard.com and the code lives in this repository. For players, the value is search and context: rather than reading raw killmails one by one, they get a browsable view of losses and kills across the game. The README points users who need help to a Discord channel, which is the supported route for assistance. Because the data describes a live game with a large player base, the board functions as both a historical archive and a daily operational tool for corporations planning or reviewing fights. The name change story is a reminder that the project grew out of a community around the game, and the forum censorship episode is part of why the current brand exists at all. That origin shapes the tone of the project as a fan run service rather than a vendor product.

How it started and grew

The README gives a clear origin story. zKillboard began as the idea of Squizz Caphinator, who wanted to improve on the Eve-Dev Killboard. Rather than keep modifying that existing code, Squizz wrote a new killboard from scratch. Karbowiak of eve-kill.net joined, contributed significant code, created a GitHub repository, and announced zKillboard as the beta killboard for eve-kill.net. Over time creative differences led Squizz to fork the project and make this repository the official home of zKillboard.com. The next year Squizz explored NoSQL databases, which suited the scale and structure of killmail data, and after two months of development the repository was made public with full NoSQL support. With the later shutdown of eve-kill.net and Battleclinic, Squizz committed to keeping all collected killmails publicly accessible. That commitment shows up as APIs and killmail data dumps, which the README says are available and documented in the project wiki. The history explains why the codebase looks the way it does, built around storing and serving a huge, growing set of killmails. The move to NoSQL in particular is a direct response to the volume of data, and the public dumps are the concrete result of the promise to keep the records open after other services closed.

Licensing and data sources

The code in this repository is released under the GNU Affero General Public License, version 3, with the full text in the AGPL.md file. The README restates that licensing for all files is found in AGPL.md. EVE Online data and images carry a separate license from CCP, the game's publisher, and the project tells readers to consult CCP.md for those terms. Various third party libraries are also used, each under its own license. This split matters: the application code is AGPL, but the game content it displays is governed by CCP's license, so anyone reusing the software must respect both. The README keeps the licensing section short and direct, pointing to the license files rather than restating them. For a developer interested in running their own killboard or studying the implementation, the AGPL means modifications served to users must also be shared. The project is written in HTML (the repository's primary language tag) and is published at zkillboard.com. The separation between the AGPL application and the CCP licensed game assets is the part a fork author must understand first, because running a clone means shipping the code under AGPL while still obeying CCP's rules for the underlying EVE data that the board exists to display.

Editorial conclusion

The application code is released under the GNU Affero General Public License version 3 and is hosted at zkillboard.com.