Peter,

You raise some very good points.

I've released code under the Smithsonian copyright using the GPL license for some time, and that would certainly have the same implications for modification and additional copyrights.  I know of other code released under the Smithsonian copyright under the GPL (http://cxc.cfa.harvard.edu/ciao/) which has undergone more formal license review by the Smithsonian, so I believe I'm on firm ground saying that the GPL (and thus the implications for further modifications and copyright assignment) is fine.

I also know of code released over the course of more than a couple of decades under even less restrictive licenses, so I believe that the Smithsonian doesn't give a hoot, provided that
it gets acknowledgement of credit.

Multiple copyright holders should not be a problem, so you can leave me in as a copyright holder.

Thanks for paying attention to these details!  I hope the above reasoning is sufficient.

Thanks,

Diab

It looks good, apart from the copyright; thanks for the reformatting!

Copyright should lie solely with the Smithsonian.  I'm not sure I get to claim anything but authorship.


Thanks,

Diab

automake provides for a hierarchy of variables, with user specified variables overriding those specified by the developer.

At times it may be necessary to amend the values specified by the user; this macro does this using an approach set forth on the automake mailing list:

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/automake/2005-09/msg00108.html

which moves values specified at configure time into automake's base set of variables, allowing them to be manipulated.