list of authors is unclear

[mcr]

We need to acknowledge Xiph.org Foundation (by person name) as an author, and then we need to make sure that former contributors are acknowledged.

[ktmf01]

Looking through the git history for doc/html/format.html and doc/format.html Josh Coalson is the only committer before 2010. There are no mentions of other authors in the commit messages or AUTHORS file.

All changes made by others between Josh stopped working on FLAC and the copying of the document to the cellar repository can be viewed here on github. The only change besides typos and fixing dead URLs is the definition of channel ordering for files with 7 and 8 channels. I would say this change is not really one that bears any copyright. Nevertheless, it was written by Ralph Giles. Commit to flac repository is here, though it was first on the website here

Concluding, I would say the original author of this specification as it was at the time the file was copied to the cellar repository is just Josh Coalson, and nobody else can reasonably be credited as author. If anyone is able to contact him about the copyright, he might be able to confirm this.

[ktmf01]

@mcr With Josh Coalson agreeing to relicense to 3-clause BSD, can this issue be closed?