Talk:GNU Screen

message: Anyone know how old screen is? I tried checking the changelogs, but they start at version 2.3, and don't include any dates. I've been an active user since the early 90s, but I think it's much older than that? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Marcusramberg (talk • contribs) 
:1987, according to the copyright & usenet post --Karnesky 18:05, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The referenced new.sources posting doesn't mention GPL - anyone know when the license changed? Tedickey (talk) 10:07, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Haven't double-checked anything, but Abram Hindle discusses screen's history.  2.1b apparently had license confusion (devs stating that it was under the GPL, but shipped with an MIT-style license), 3.2 definitely shipped with the GPL, and 3.1.1 might have (the latter according to ChangeLog).  All of this was in 1991/1992. --Karnesky (talk) 13:13, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  History? 

message: The information in the following table was gleaned from archives of the newsgroup comp.sources.unix on the ISC's FTP server.  All dates are converted to YYYY-MM-DD from their original forms.  At least two versions are available below predate the 2.1 code still possessed by the poster above at 84.137.124.82 ("Oliver Laumann").  
While the history of screen (also linked above) contains a wealth of historical material, I felt the sources for his table of versions remain a bit unclear.  Only one of the releases in the table below (3.5.0) appears in Hindle's list of released versions.  Further, the versions and dates below are open to verification by anyone and the source code may contain additional useful historical information.  Enjoy!
Version/Link	Archive file date	Shar Date 	Posting Date	Dev Date  	Comments
screen-1.1i 	1987-08-07       	-         	1987-08-07  	1987-07-01	Dev date from ScreenVersion string in screen.c.The .TH macro in the manpage lists the date 1987-03-02.Primary dev: Oliver Laumann <seismo!tub!net>
screen-2.0a 	1989-02-07       	-         	-           	1988-10-19	Dev date from ScreenVersion string in screen.c.
screen-3.1.1	1991-12-20       	1991-12-19	-           	1991-10-03	Dev date from patchlevel.h.patchlevel.h also indicates this date is when the code was put under "GNU copyleft".File "COPYING" contains GNU GPL "Version 1, February 1989".Primary devs: Wayne Davison, Juergen Weigert and Michael SchroederO. Laumann credited as creator and 7 others listed as contributors in the manpage."
screen-3.5.0	1993-07-25       	1993-07-25	-           	1993-07-22	Archives incomplete.Dev date from patchlevel.h.In addition to O.L. credit and 3 main devs, 26 others are listed as contributors in the manpage.
screen-3.5.1	1993-08-08       	1993-08-08	-           	1993-08-08	Archives incomplete.Dev date from patchlevel.h.Primarily a bug fix release.
NOTE: For those who have not encountered them before, the files available at the archive links are in an old-school self-extracting archive format called shar.  Source code was distributed on usenet for many years in this form.  Some of the files are compressed with the old Unix 'compress' utility (.Z), but I believe most versions of gzip can handle uncompressing these files. --Dfred (talk) 18:03, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Early screen version history as reconstructed from comp.sources.unix archive

message: Linking to the ftp site doesn't answer the question: when did "screen" become a GNU project.  For instance, an look at screen 3.7.4 finds no mention of this. Tedickey (talk) 01:50, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmm. This is a tough one. The earliest announcement on info-gnu referring to screen that I see is from 2004, though it was apparently hosted on prep.ai.mit.edu in /pub/gnu in 1991. What exactly does it mean to be a GNU project? I was under the impression that the GNU project required copyright assignment. On the other hand, it was listed as being in /pub/non-gnu in August 2000, but in /gnu in March 2001. Maybe something happened in that interim? There's an old mailing list, but the archive is spotty and I don't know if there's anything relevant in there anyway. Maybe some enterprising soul should just write to the screen-devel mailing list and ask what the history is? Perhaps one of the developers can answer. (It's a public mailing list; the developers are reliable sources; it's citeable.) grendel|khan 16:40, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Criteria for being hosted on prep.ai.mit.edu has also evolved (though I don't recall the specific dates, I seem to recall noticing when the gnu/non-gnu trees were split, which would have been in the early 1990s but after 1991).  It would be nice to have some pre-existing discussion on the mailing lists, of course. Tedickey (talk) 16:58, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  cite for GNU project