1How curl Became Like This 2========================= 3 4Towards the end of 1996, Daniel Stenberg was spending time writing an IRC bot 5for an Amiga related channel on EFnet. He then came up with the idea to make 6currency-exchange calculations available to Internet Relay Chat (IRC) 7users. All the necessary data were published on the Web; he just needed to 8automate their retrieval. 9 10Daniel simply adopted an existing command-line open-source tool, httpget, that 11Brazilian Rafael Sagula had written and recently released version 0.1 of. After 12a few minor adjustments, it did just what he needed. 13 141997 15---- 16 17HttpGet 1.0 was released on April 8th 1997 with brand new HTTP proxy support. 18 19We soon found and fixed support for getting currencies over GOPHER. Once FTP 20download support was added, the name of the project was changed and urlget 2.0 21was released in August 1997. The http-only days were already passed. 22 231998 24---- 25 26The project slowly grew bigger. When upload capabilities were added and the 27name once again was misleading, a second name change was made and on March 20, 281998 curl 4 was released. (The version numbering from the previous names was 29kept.) 30 31(Unrelated to this project a company called Curl Corporation registered a US 32trademark on the name "CURL" on May 18 1998. That company had then already 33registered the curl.com domain back in November of the previous year. All this 34was revealed to us much later.) 35 36SSL support was added, powered by the SSLeay library. 37 38August: first announcement of curl on freshmeat.net. 39 40October: with the curl 4.9 release and the introduction of cookie support, 41curl was no longer released under the GPL license. Now we're at 4000 lines of 42code, we switched over to the MPL license to restrict the effects of 43"copyleft". 44 45November: configure script and reported successful compiles on several 46major operating systems. The never-quite-understood -F option was added and 47curl could now simulate quite a lot of a browser. TELNET support was added. 48 49Curl 5 was released in December 1998 and introduced the first ever curl man 50page. People started making Linux RPM packages out of it. 51 521999 53---- 54 55January: DICT support added. 56 57OpenSSL took over and SSLeay was abandoned. 58 59May: first Debian package. 60 61August: LDAP:// and FILE:// support added. The curl web site gets 1300 visits 62weekly. Moved site to curl.haxx.nu. 63 64September: Released curl 6.0. 15000 lines of code. 65 66December 28: added the project on Sourceforge and started using its services 67for managing the project. 68 692000 70---- 71 72Spring: major internal overhaul to provide a suitable library interface. 73The first non-beta release was named 7.1 and arrived in August. This offered 74the easy interface and turned out to be the beginning of actually getting 75other software and programs to be based on and powered by libcurl. Almost 7620000 lines of code. 77 78June: the curl site moves to "curl.haxx.se" 79 80August, the curl web site gets 4000 visits weekly. 81 82The PHP guys adopted libcurl already the same month, when the first ever third 83party libcurl binding showed up. CURL has been a supported module in PHP since 84the release of PHP 4.0.2. This would soon get followers. More than 16 85different bindings exist at the time of this writing. 86 87September: kerberos4 support was added. 88 89November: started the work on a test suite for curl. It was later re-written 90from scratch again. The libcurl major SONAME number was set to 1. 91 922001 93---- 94 95January: Daniel released curl 7.5.2 under a new license again: MIT (or 96MPL). The MIT license is extremely liberal and can be combined with GPL 97in other projects. This would finally put an end to the "complaints" from 98people involved in GPLed projects that previously were prohibited from using 99libcurl while it was released under MPL only. (Due to the fact that MPL is 100deemed "GPL incompatible".) 101 102March 22: curl supports HTTP 1.1 starting with the release of 7.7. This 103also introduced libcurl's ability to do persistent connections. 24000 lines of 104code. The libcurl major SONAME number was bumped to 2 due to this overhaul. 105The first experimental ftps:// support was added. 106 107August: curl is bundled in Mac OS X, 10.1. It was already becoming more and 108more of a standard utility of Linux distributions and a regular in the BSD 109ports collections. The curl web site gets 8000 visits weekly. Curl Corporation 110contacted Daniel to discuss "the name issue". After Daniel's reply, they have 111never since got back in touch again. 112 113September: libcurl 7.9 introduces cookie jar and curl_formadd(). During the 114forthcoming 7.9.x releases, we introduced the multi interface slowly and 115without many whistles. 116 1172002 118---- 119 120June: the curl web site gets 13000 visits weekly. curl and libcurl is 12135000 lines of code. Reported successful compiles on more than 40 combinations 122of CPUs and operating systems. 123 124To estimate number of users of the curl tool or libcurl library is next to 125impossible. Around 5000 downloaded packages each week from the main site gives 126a hint, but the packages are mirrored extensively, bundled with numerous OS 127distributions and otherwise retrieved as part of other software. 128 129September: with the release of curl 7.10 it is released under the MIT license 130only. 131 1322003 133---- 134 135January: Started working on the distributed curl tests. The autobuilds. 136 137February: the curl site averages at 20000 visits weekly. At any given moment, 138there's an average of 3 people browsing the curl.haxx.se site. 139 140Multiple new authentication schemes are supported: Digest (May), NTLM (June) 141and Negotiate (June). 142 143November: curl 7.10.8 is released. 45000 lines of code. ~55000 unique visitors 144to the curl.haxx.se site. Five official web mirrors. 145 146December: full-fledged SSL for FTP is supported. 147 1482004 149---- 150 151January: curl 7.11.0 introduced large file support. 152 153June: curl 7.12.0 introduced IDN support. 10 official web mirrors. 154 155This release bumped the major SONAME to 3 due to the removal of the 156curl_formparse() function 157 158August: Curl and libcurl 7.12.1 159 160 Public curl release number: 82 161 Releases counted from the very beginning: 109 162 Available command line options: 96 163 Available curl_easy_setopt() options: 120 164 Number of public functions in libcurl: 36 165 Amount of public web site mirrors: 12 166 Number of known libcurl bindings: 26 167 1682005 169---- 170 171April: GnuTLS can now optionally be used for the secure layer when curl is 172built. 173 174April: Added the multi_socket() API 175 176September: TFTP support was added. 177 178More than 100,000 unique visitors of the curl web site. 25 mirrors. 179 180December: security vulnerability: libcurl URL Buffer Overflow 181 1822006 183---- 184 185January: We dropped support for Gopher. We found bugs in the implementation 186that turned out to have been introduced years ago, so with the conclusion that 187nobody had found out in all this time we removed it instead of fixing it. 188 189March: security vulnerability: libcurl TFTP Packet Buffer Overflow 190 191September: The major SONAME number for libcurl was bumped to 4 due to the 192removal of ftp third party transfer support. 193 194November: Added SCP and SFTP support 195 1962007 197---- 198 199February: Added support for the Mozilla NSS library to do the SSL/TLS stuff 200 201July: security vulnerability: libcurl GnuTLS insufficient cert verification 202 2032008 204---- 205 206November: 207 208 Command line options: 128 209 curl_easy_setopt() options: 158 210 Public functions in libcurl: 58 211 Known libcurl bindings: 37 212 Contributors: 683 213 214 145,000 unique visitors. >100 GB downloaded. 215 2162009 217---- 218 219March: security vulnerability: libcurl Arbitrary File Access 220 221April: added CMake support 222 223August: security vulnerability: libcurl embedded zero in cert name 224 225December: Added support for IMAP, POP3 and SMTP 226 2272010 228---- 229 230January: Added support for RTSP 231 232February: security vulnerability: libcurl data callback excessive length 233 234March: The project switched over to use git (hosted by github) instead of CVS 235for source code control 236 237May: Added support for RTMP 238 239Added support for PolarSSL to do the SSL/TLS stuff 240 241August: 242 243 Public curl releases: 117 244 Command line options: 138 245 curl_easy_setopt() options: 180 246 Public functions in libcurl: 58 247 Known libcurl bindings: 39 248 Contributors: 808 249 250 Gopher support added (re-added actually, see January 2006) 251 2522011 253---- 254 255February: added support for the axTLS backend 256 257April: added the cyassl backend (later renamed to WolfSSL) 258 2592012 260---- 261 262 July: Added support for Schannel (native Windows TLS backend) and Darwin SSL 263 (Native Mac OS X and iOS TLS backend). 264 265 Supports metalink 266 267 October: SSH-agent support. 268 2692013 270---- 271 272 February: Cleaned up internals to always uses the "multi" non-blocking 273 approach internally and only expose the blocking API with a wrapper. 274 275 September: First small steps on supporting HTTP/2 with nghttp2. 276 277 October: Removed krb4 support. 278 279 December: Happy eyeballs. 280 2812014 282---- 283 284 March: first real release supporting HTTP/2 285 286 September: Web site had 245,000 unique visitors and served 236GB data 287 288 SMB and SMBS support 289 2902015 291---- 292 293 June: support for multiplexing with HTTP/2 294 295 August: support for HTTP/2 server push 296 297 December: Public Suffix List 298 2992016 300---- 301 302 January: the curl tool defaults to HTTP/2 for HTTPS URLs 303 304 December: curl 7.52.0 introduced support for HTTPS-proxy! 305 306 First TLS 1.3 support 307 3082017 309---- 310 311 July: OSS-Fuzz started fuzzing libcurl 312 313 September: Added Multi-SSL support 314 315 The web site serves 3100 GB/month 316 317 Public curl releases: 169 318 Command line options: 211 319 curl_easy_setopt() options: 249 320 Public functions in libcurl: 74 321 Contributors: 1609 322 323 October: SSLKEYLOGFILE support, new MIME API 324 325 November: brotli 326 3272018 328---- 329 330 January: new SSH backend powered by libssh 331 332 March: starting with the 1803 release of Windows 10, curl is shipped bundled 333 with Microsoft's operating system. 334 335 July: curl shows headers using bold type face 336 337 October: added DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) and the URL API 338 339 MesaLink is a new supported TLS backend 340 341 libcurl now does HTTP/2 (and multiplexing) by default on HTTPS URLs 342 343 curl and libcurl are installed in an estimated 5 *billion* instances 344 world-wide. 345 346 October 31: Curl and libcurl 7.62.0 347 348 Public curl releases: 177 349 Command line options: 219 350 curl_easy_setopt() options: 261 351 Public functions in libcurl: 80 352 Contributors: 1808 353 3542019 355---- 356 357 August: the first HTTP/3 requests with curl. 358 359 September: 7.66.0 is released and the tool offers parallel downloads 360