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  Copyright (C) 2001, 2002 Privoxy Developers <developers@privoxy.org>
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<para>
 In the beginning, there was the
 <ulink url="http://www.junkbusters.com/ijb.html"><application>Internet Junkbuster</application></ulink>, 
 by Anonymous Coders and <ulink url="http://www.junkbusters.com/">Junkbusters
 Corporation</ulink>. It saved many users a lot of pain in the early days of
 web advertising and user tracking.
</para>

<para>
 But the web, its protocols and standards, and with it, the techniques for
 forcing  users to consume ads, give up autonomy over their browsing, and
 for spying on them, kept evolving. Unfortunately, the <application>Internet
 Junkbuster</application> did not. Version 2.0.2, published in 1998, was 
 (and is) the last official
 <ulink url="http://www.junkbusters.com/ijbdist.html#release">release</ulink>
 available from <ulink url="http://www.junkbusters.com">Junkbusters Corporation</ulink>.
 Fortunately, it had been released under the GNU
 <ulink url="http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html"> GPL</ulink>, which allowed further
 development by others.
</para>

<para>
 So Stefan Waldherr started maintaining an
 <ulink url="http://www.waldherr.org/junkbuster/">improved version of the
 software</ulink>, 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.
</para>

<para>
 Then, some
 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/copyright.html#AUTHORS">developers</ulink>
 picked up the thread, and started turning the software inside out, upside down,
 and then reassembled it, adding many
 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/introduction.html#FEATURES">new
 features</ulink> along the way.
</para>

<para>
 The result of this is <application>Privoxy</application>, whose first
 stable release, 3.0, was released August, 2002. 
 <!-- Cautious!!!!!!!!! ;) -->
</para>

