Privoxy Frequently Asked Questions
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7. Copyright and History

7.1. Copyright

Privoxy is free software; you can - redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public - - - License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the - License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT - ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or - FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for - - more details, which is available from the Free Software Foundation, Inc, 59 - Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License - along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., - 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA.

7.2. History

Privoxy is evolved, and derived from, - the Internet Junkbuster, with many - improvments and enhancements over the original.

Junkbuster was originally written by Anonymous - Coders and Junkbusters - Corporation, and was released as free open-source software under the - GNU GPL. Stefan - Waldherr made many improvements, and started the SourceForge project - Privoxy to rekindle development. There are now several active - developers contributing. The last stable release of - Junkbuster was v2.0.2, which has now - grown whiskers ;-).

Privoxy Frequently Asked Questions
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7. Privoxy Copyright, License and History

Portions of this document are "borrowed" from the original Junkbuster (tm) FAQ, and modified as appropriate for Privoxy.

7.1. License

Privoxy is free software; you can redistribute and/or modify its source code + under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software + Foundation, either version 2 of the license, or (at your option) any later version.

The same is true for Privoxy binaries unless they are linked with mbed TLS in which case you can redistribute them and/or modify them + under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software + Foundation, either version 3 of the license, or (at your option) any later version.

Privoxy is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY + WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the + license for details.

7.2. History

A long time ago, there was the Internet Junkbuster, by Anonymous Coders and + Junkbusters Corporation. This saved many users a lot of pain in the early days of web advertising and user + tracking.

But the web, its protocols and standards, and with it, the techniques for forcing ads on users, give up + autonomy over their browsing, and for tracking them, keeps evolving. Unfortunately, the Internet Junkbuster did not. Version 2.0.2, published in 1998, was the last official + release, available from Junkbusters Corporation. Fortunately, it had been released under the GNU GPL, which allowed further development + by others.

So Stefan Waldherr started maintaining an improved version of the software, to which eventually a number of + people contributed patches. It could already replace banners with a transparent image, and had a first version of + pop-up killing, but it was still very closely based on the original, with all its limitations, such as the lack + of HTTP/1.1 support, flexible per-site configuration, or content modification. The last release from this effort + was version 2.0.2-10, published in 2000.

Then, some developers + picked up the thread, and started turning the software inside out, upside down, and then reassembled it, adding + many new features + along the way.

The result of this is Privoxy, whose first stable version, 3.0, was released + August, 2002.

As of 2012 the Junkbusters Corporation's website (http://www.junkbusters.com/) has been shut down, but Privoxy + is still actively maintained.

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