phpChat 1.0b, Copyright (c) 1999 by Till Gerken, till@phpwebdev.com
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This software is distributed under the terms of the license contained in
phpChat_license.txt. If you cannot find this file, you have an unofficial
and thus illegal version of phpChat. Please delete it at once and get
a fresh archive from http://www.phpwizard.net/phpChat.

phpChat is NOT free, for commercial usage you need to purchase a commercial
license. Please contact till@phpwebdev.com for details.

For notes about installation, please see INSTALL.

1. Overview
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phpChat is an open source chat system written entirely in PHP. It is
based on the widely known and broadly used IRC protocol. This makes
phpChat substantially different from the average database-backed chat
systems, which usually only allow one instance to be run.

phpChat allows to connect multiple chat servers together to form a chat
network, route traffic through existing networks or simply work as stand-
alone chat application.

In a slightly restricted manner and with few modifications it can also
operate as safe gateway to IRC by bypassing firewalls, using HTTP for
interfacing into the secured network behind the firewall and using IRC
from a webserver outside of the secured network for interfacing the chat
server.

2. Restrictions in the beta version
-----------------------------------

This version of phpChat is a beta version, meaning it is a working, but
not complete version of the final package.

The current restrictions are:

- limited command interpreter
- sessions are not cleaned up correctly yet (occasionally leaves ghosts
  in the database and memory)
- only one channel / window is supported
- database abstraction is rudimentary and only MySQL is supported so far
- partly insufficient documentation
- no administration tools
- the creation code for shared memory is broken and thus needs an injector
- other minor bugs

It is, however, functional already and can be used.

3. Copyright and contact
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This software archive is copyright and maintained by Till Gerken,
till@phpwebdev.com.

Additional code has been contributed by Tobias Ratschiller, tobias@dnet.it.
