2 File : doc/source/history.sgml
4 Purpose : Entity included in other project documents.
6 Copyright (C) 2001-2018 Privoxy Developers https://www.privoxy.org/
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26 A long time ago, there was the <application>Internet Junkbuster</application>,
27 by Anonymous Coders and Junkbusters Corporation. This saved many users a lot of
28 pain in the early days of web advertising and user tracking.
32 But the web, its protocols and standards, and with it, the techniques for
33 forcing ads on users, give up autonomy over their browsing, and
34 for tracking them, keeps evolving. Unfortunately, the <application>Internet
35 Junkbuster</application> did not. Version 2.0.2, published in 1998, was
36 the last official release, available from Junkbusters Corporation.
37 Fortunately, it had been released under the GNU
38 <ulink url="http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html">GPL</ulink>,
39 which allowed further development by others.
43 So Stefan Waldherr started maintaining an improved version of the
44 software, to which eventually a number of people contributed patches.
45 It could already replace banners with a transparent image, and had a first
46 version of pop-up killing, but it was still very closely based on the
47 original, with all its limitations, such as the lack of HTTP/1.1 support,
48 flexible per-site configuration, or content modification. The last release
49 from this effort was version 2.0.2-10, published in 2000.
54 <ulink url="https://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/copyright.html#AUTHORS">developers</ulink>
55 picked up the thread, and started turning the software inside out, upside down,
56 and then reassembled it, adding many
57 <ulink url="https://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/introduction.html#FEATURES">new
58 features</ulink> along the way.
62 The result of this is <application>Privoxy</application>, whose first
63 stable version, 3.0, was released August, 2002.
64 <!-- Cautious!!!!!!!!! ;) -->
68 As of 2012 the Junkbusters Corporation's website (http://www.junkbusters.com/)
69 has been shut down, but Privoxy is still actively maintained.