Project History

March 2000

I have started the first works on project in about March 2000, while I was working in IT departement of University of Economics in Prague. Temporary name “WinSCP” (Windows Secure CoPy) was chosen until nicer name is found (what never happened actually).

WinSCP was probably the first GUI file transfer client for SSH ever (at least on Microsoft Windows platform).

Original idea came from Jan Havlicek. In fact he wanted the tool much. And he bothered me for weeks until I finally decided to implement it for him, without ever needing it myself before. He was also the first one who spread word about WinSCP on Internet, before the project pages were set up.

Late 2000

During late 2000 distribution of the first releases of WinSCP 1.0 was started. The first WinSCP site was set up in October 2000 with address winscp.vse.cz. It was designed by Katerina Sramkova.

Version 1.0 supported SCP protocol over SSH-1 only. There were several publicly available builds of the 1.0 release. Beside them there were no more releases of 1.x series ever.

In addition to English version, there was also Czech one. It made 1.0 the only localised version for years.

See screenshots.

October 2001

As version 1.0 was my first application of the kind, it was terribly designed, and consequently it was not worth extending. So once, after some break, I decided to continue with the project, I needed to start from the scratch. Results of my work were released in October 2000 as version 2.0 beta.

It introduced SSH-2, public key authentication, alternative Explorer-like interface and many other features.

It took me more than one year before I felt 2.x series mature enough to release first non-beta version, 2.2, in Januray 2003.

June 2003

In June 2003 version 3.0 was released, introducing support for alternative to SCP, SFTP protocol. Over time it evolved from alternative to primary protocol. Despite this, well-established name “WinSCP” was preserved.

July 2003

After leaving the University, I have decided to move WinSCP project from University server to SourceForge. Primary WinSCP site address was changed to winscp.sourceforge.net.

July 2003

While WinSCP was in general open-source project since its start, only with migration to SourceForge, it turned into true open-source by adapting GPL licence.

September 2003

Since September 2003, WinSCP is also available as plugin to FAR file manager.

September 2003

Version 3.4 released in September 2003 was the first localized version since 1.0. There were Czech, Japanese, Russian and Spanish translations. Many other were introduced in later versions.

December 2004

Thanks to Brandon Blackmoor WinSCP site got new design in December 2004.

March 2005

In March 2005 the WinSCP site moved the second time. New address is winscp.net and the site is partly hosted on TeamForge. File downloads, CVS and other features are still hosted on SourceForge.

May 2005

After several unsuccessful attempts to find someone to write down documentation for WinSCP, I have decided to go Wiki-way. With some help of the community, I finished it in May 2019.