X-Git-Url: https://jxself.org/git/?p=beyond-the-titanic.git;a=blobdiff_plain;f=History%2FHistory.txt;fp=History%2FHistory.txt;h=04b4fe829a8c0b634821befc916fbd3d8bd8af09;hp=0000000000000000000000000000000000000000;hb=6cb4785e2abee85844e8b04189e286f4f3030719;hpb=f387daadeb15d5fa1b1641cad2250ef1aa674ee5

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+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