--- /dev/null
+This directory is intended to document the history of Beyond The Titanic and
+provide documentation of how it became free software.
+
+Beyond The Titanic was originally written by Scott Miller in the 1980s. Going
+off of the copyright notices in the source code he began in 1984. The game
+was originally proprietary.
+
+Later, Scott Miller was one of the founders of Apogee Software, Ltd. in
+1987 [0].
+
+According to the corporate timeline [1] Beyond The Titanic was published in
+1986 before Apogee started and then released as freeware (but still
+proprietary) in 1998 [2]. In 2009 Apogee Software released the source code
+under the GPL [3].
+
+Based on the comments made in the announcement [3] and in the readme.txt that
+came with the game [4] it appears that they were putting it under the GPL as
+part of their process to throw the code over the wall to forget about. They
+even just added the part of it being GPLed underneath the previous text from
+where the game had been released as freeware in 1998.
+
+In reviewing the license headers in their release [5] there are copyright
+notices from Apogee Software so it appears that Scott Miller transferred his
+copyright to Apogee at some point. This make sense since he was one of the
+founders of the company and the game had been distributed as an Apogee
+program. Also, the license headers indicated it was specifically released
+under the GNU General Public License version 2 or any later version. I took
+advantage of that to upgrade it to the GNU General Public License version 3
+or any later version. The modifications are licensed under the GNU Affero
+General Public License version 3 or any later version. This combination of
+GPLv3 or later and AGPLv3 or later is permitted under section 13 of each
+license.
+
+[0] See https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=3D_Realms&oldid=605663632
+[1] See the file timeline.png or visit https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.3drealms.com/history.html
+[2] See the file btt-freeware.png or readme.txt in this directory or visit https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.3drealms.com/news/1998/03/beyond_the_tita.html
+[3] See the file gpl-announcement.png or visit https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.3drealms.com/news/2009/03/several_old_games_released_as_freeware.html
+[4] See readme.txt in this directory.
+[5] See the initial commit in this git repository or ftp://ftp.3drealms.com/freeware/tit_free.zip
projects / beyond-the-titanic.git / blobdiff