when was Oolite created?

[Commander McLane]

I noticed that the copyright notice on the splash screen has changed in Oolite 1.75 from "2004 - 2010" to "2003 - 2011" (it's in game-copyright in descriptions.plist).

However, all in-built scripts still carry "2004 - 2011" in their copyright notice, as does the ReadMe.

Which one is correct?

[JensAyton]

Hmm. The oldest version I know of is marked Oolite version 0.1, or oolite_test1.dmg. It’s dated April 28, 2004. Its about box says “Copyright 2003 MyGreatSoftware”, suggesting the Xcode (or rather, Project Builder) project was created in 2003, but copyright dates correctly refer to the dat of first publication, so 2004 is probably right. Still, I don’t know for a fact that there were no (source or binary) “publications” in 2003.

All that said, I have no idea what you’re looking at, because no release of Oolite has had 2004–2010 on the startup screen.

[Commander McLane]

I'm looking at the game-copyright key in descriptions.plist. (I thought that's the one which is displayed over the spinning Cobra (sorry, splash screen was wrong)).

In Oolite 1.75 it reads "by Giles Williams and contributors © 2003–2011". I am quite certain that in previous versions, up to and including 1.74.n, it read "by Giles Williams and contributors © 2004–<current year>".

EDIT: Now I'm puzzled. I don't have any intermediate version anymore for checking. But I just opened 1.65. It says "by Giles Williams (C) 2003-2006". Seems I've been wrong in the first place, as far as descriptions.plist is concerned. Sorry.

However, the license notices in the scripts unanimously say:

Code: Select all

/*

oolite-cloaking-device-mission.js

Script for cloaking device mission.
 

Oolite
Copyright © 2004-2011 Giles C Williams and contributors

This program 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.

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., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston,
MA 02110-1301, USA.

*/

[JensAyton]

The header comments in svn revision 1 – which marks the beginning of the Linux port, not the beginning of the Mac project – all the core files have this in the header comment:

Code: Select all

/*
 *
 *  Oolite
 *
 *  Created by Giles Williams on Sat Apr 03 2004.
 *  Copyright (c) 2004 for aegidian.org. All rights reserved.
 *

My guess is that this was copied and pasted between files at some earlier point without paying attention to the date.

Version 0.1 says “by Giles Williams © 2003,2004” on the startup screen. (Unlike 1.65, it has a real © symbol, and works under 10.6.6.)

[Commander McLane]

So in essence this means that it should be 2003 everywhere?