History of FreeDink
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This document describes the adventures of the GNU FreeDink package
from its origins to the current days.



The Dink engine source code was released on Wednesday, July 16th 2003 under the following license:

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*** Dink Smallwood Source License Information ***

This software is provided "as is" without express or implied
warranties. You may freely use, modify and distribute this
source provided that the copyright text below is included in
the resulting source code, for example:
"Portions Copyright (C) Seth A. Robinson, 1997-2003

You may use this source in personal and commercial products, you
are not required to release the source code.

Please note that sharing this source does not in any way relinquish interest or forfeit any rights enjoyed by
Robinson Technologies and Seth A. Robinson concerning the name Dink Smallwood and related media includeding graphics,
sounds, music, scripts and map data. (hereafter referred to as "Dink Smallwood Media").

Repackaging or distributing the Dink Smallwood Media in a modified format requires permission from
Seth A. Robinson.  Please consult the license included with the Dink Smallwood full version distribution for
more information.

Fastfile.*, ffcreate.*, dsutil.* and ddutil.* are copyrighted by the Microsoft Corporation and excluded
from the above license.

-Seth A. Robinson (seth@rtsoft.com)
www.rtsoft.com

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And also in the source code:

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If you use any of this source in a commercial product, you are gently asked
to donate a few bucks to Seth.  Check www.codedojo.com for info on how to do that.

Donations:  If you find this source helpful in some way and use it in a product you are selling, you are
gently asked to donate a couple bucks via codedojo.com.  This cash will be used to maintain the site
and hopefully inspire me to get off my duff and release more source.

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Christoph Reichenbach, lead developer of FreeSCI, created right away a
nice programming environnement by creating an account at SourceForge,
setting up the CVS repository, doing some autoconf and Unix-like file
hierarchy, uploading Microsoft files in a separated archive, started
some cleaning up and left the project in the hands of project
admnistrator Andrew Reading on August 4th 2003.

He and Andrew McCall started cleaning up the code, splitting the small
116 kb dinkc.cpp and 248 kb dinkvar.h VC++/DirectX files that produced
only 103 warnings, and merged some engine bugfixes and improvements by
Dan Walma. A presentation website was also started with more forums
than actual posts ;)

Meanwhile, Shawn Betts started a SDL port out of the latest CVS
checkout, which unfortunately was not up-to-date at all. However all
the interest was then concentrated on that branch, that soon was
merged with the other improvements and became the head one. It allowed
to get rid of dependency on Microsoft non-free files, while
Christoph's src/ hierarchy was thrown away since there was less than
15 C++ files.

Sylvain Beucler took care of some administrative tasks such as
testing, handling licensing issues, beg for appropriate file chmod-ing
on the web server, and writing this documentation.

(From here, I will focus on my own work, and will now speak at the
first person)

Work slowly continued with some problems like CVS EOL mess due to use
of a repository under different systems, and misunderstanding of
branching. A code to make dink use files case-insensitively was begun
and is currently dropped until some more urgent problems are
fixed. Tensions with Andrew Reading leads me to stop wasting time,
fork the project and start 'FreeDink', with a code base located at
Savannah, where it was accepted after the first request (I was told it
was rare).

FreeDink also applied to be part of the GNU project - and was
accepted. This means an emphasis on freedom, support for the GNU
system, and conformance to the GNU policies. The Savannah crack of
November 2003 (discovered in December) made some administration tasks
to be delayed, so FreeDink still has not its official GNU page, among
others.

Meanwhile (December 14th 2003), the forked version staff decided to
forsake the projet and start a new game engine from scratch, keeping
the same name. DMods conversion tools release is planned when the
engine is finished. The project's CVS repository was also completely
emptied. Fortunately I add a repository backup of that code, except
the latest maintainance additions and the DinkC++ beta version. More
important however is the change of licence: since no code was reused,
it was decided to use another licence, GPL-incompatible, which means
FreeDink and that project will be completely separated, without a
chance to exchange code. That also means that FreeDink is not anymore
a fork, but the lead project based on Seth Robinson's original work.

Next step: when FreeDink will be completely integrated in the GNU
project structure, and when some bugs will be fixed, the first public
version will be released.


Sylvain Beucler

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Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
notice and this notice are preserved.
