IMPORTANT - Copyright issues

[Ross Johnson <rpj@ise.canberra.edu.au>]

Dear all,

PLEASE read the following. Some of you will consider this important
and others may not. I'm asking for comments and suggestions at the
end of this message.

Pthreads-win32 is licensed under the FSF Lesser General Public License
(LGPL).

The Copyright does not however belong to the Free Software Foundation.
It has never been assigned to them and, more to the point, they (RMS)
have declined to accept assignment because the library is too OS
specific.

THEREFORE, I've !!TEMPORARILY!! modified all source files to contain
the following Copyright notice.

	Copyright(C) 1998 Ben Elliston and Ross Johnson
	Copyright(C) 1999,2000,2001 Ross Johnson

Now, I know I'm not the author of this work. The reason for the
temporary Copyright is NOT to steal everyone's credit or
intellectual property, but to satisfy a vendor who requested a proper
Copyright notice so that they could properly comply with the LGPL,
which requires that the Pthreads-win32 Copyright be displayed along
with any belonging to the application it's linked with.

Previously there was no author listed in the Copyright notice
in any of the source files, and I don't know if it's required or
not for it to be valid, so I've assumed it's necessary.

NOW, I'm asking those of you who are interested (and some of you
have contributed substantial work to the project, and acknowledged
for it) to suggest what should be the PERMANENT Copyright notice?

As an initial suggestion, I propose that it be something like

<quote>
        Copyright(C) 1998,2001 Pthreads-win32 Developers.
        The current list of developers is contained
        in the file CONTRIBUTORS with more specific attributions
	in the file ChangeLog provided with the
        pthreads-win32 source distribution. The contributors
	list is viewable at
	http://sources.redhat.com/pthreads-win32/contributors.html
</quote>

For some time now I've been trying to provide as detailed a record of
acknowledgements as possible in the form of references and attributions
in the ChangeLog files included with the distribution. This is not
the most accessible reading, but it *is* there. There is also
the general list of contributors documented in the CONTRIBUTORS file.

The current CONTRIBUTORS file can be seen at
http://sources.redhat.com/pthreads-win32/contributors.html

I'd appreciate comments and alternative suggestions from anyone
who has a strong enough interest in this, particularly those on the
contributors list, or anyone who believes they should be and aren't
(in which case I will adjust the list).

If I get no responses by February (some of us will be working hard
rearranging the sand at the beach) I'll assume that there is no
objection to the version that I've proposed above, or a clearer
version of it.

Thanks.
Ross