Copyright and Credits

Copyright Statement

    ChibiOS/RT - Copyright (C) 2006,2007,2008,2009,2010 Giovanni Di Sirio.

Contributions and Copyright Assignment

If you plan to contribute code to the ChibiOS/RT project then there is a requirement you should be aware of: contributing code for inclusion in the ChibiOS/RT main line requires assigning the copyright on the contributed code to me (Giovanni Di Sirio).
This may sound a bit strange but is pretty standard for this kind of projects, there are several reasons for this requirement:

ChibiOS/RT will probably also become a commercial product and it would not be possible to re-license the code without ownership. Note that the commercial product would not be a different or better product, just the same GPL product made available, on request, under a different license. The code will always be available to you under the current licensing terms.
Ownership is required when changing the licensing terms and this happens each time the project goes from development/unstable to stable and back because the addition/removal of the GPL linking exception.
It will be easier for the project adopters to have a single ownership point in case of licensing issues (both GPL or commercial).
Losing the ownership on the code could preclude me the opportunity to make this project a full time job as I hope.
I definitely don't want to have to sort out copyright related issues in the future so better be clear than sorry.

Note that contributions will always be welcome even without such copyright assignment, the difference is that the contributed code would not be merged into the main line, it will still made available as contributed code with the contributor(s) copyright notice intact.
Submissions of code with copyright notice should only happen through email, please do not commit code with copyright notices directly on the repository.
When submitting code please state clearly your intention to keep the copyright on your work by adding your own copyright notice within the source code and by clearly mentioning your intentions in the message. Code contributed without copyright notice will be considered donated.
If in doubt with licensing issues please don't hesitate to contact me in order to sort out any problem you may have.
Of course the copyright assignment does not mean you would not be recognized for your hard work, see the following section.

Credits

I want to thank all the people that directly or indirectly contributed to the project, I beg pardon if someone is missing:

Adamo Reggiani, working on the Fujitsu port.
Alexander Kozaruk, AT91SAM7S256 demo and description files for the Olimex SAM7-P256 board.
Brian Weaver, STM8 port, STM8 and STM32 testing and improvements.
Egon Carusi, STM32 port improvements, testing and bug fixes.
Enrico Cavazza, working on the Fujitsu port and a GUI subsystem.
Eric Weddington, because his work on WinAVR and helping me sorting out issues with the ChibiOS/RT license.
Isidoro Orabona, co-developer of the ChibiOS/RT grandfather back in 1988, it is a long long story involving a 6502 and a Z80...
Jacek, Ride7 demo for STM32 Primer.
Leon Woestenberg, CondVars idea and implementation, documentation improvements and a lot of other ideas, he also helped with the lwIP port (he is one of the developers of that project too).
Leszek Bednarz, H8S and ColdFire ports and drivers maintainer.
Liam Staskawicz, Posix simulator, AT91SAM7x and STM32 related contributions, general improvements, many bug fixes and excellent suggestions.
Michael Fischer, because the work on YAGARTO and the excellent feedback.
Riccardo Scanu, another long story, this time involving reverse engineering and giant robots...
Vladimir, first tested and fixed the AVR port, I don't know the surname but he has been the first contributor.
Walter Goossens, several fixes to the LPC21xx support.