I never claimed to be doing a clean-room implementation.  I only ever
claimed to be rewriting the code from scratch, and that is what I am doing.
As for why I am not worried about the licensing, perhaps it would be
instructive for the group to actually READ the license from the codebase
which I clearly stated I was using as a reference.  My selection of a
BSD-style license is compatible for the restrictions placed by the license,
which I have reproduced below for those who do not have a copy handy.

At no time have corners been cut, laws broken, or others rights disparaged.

I presume (and hope) this particular thread is over. :)
 
License follows:

NETREK XP LICENSE

It's really simple.  Permission is granted similar to the copyright notices 
from Chris Guthrie, Kevin Smith and Scott Silvey.

 * Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its
 * documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted, provided
 * that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that
 * copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting
 * documentation.  No representations are made about the suitability of this
 * software for any purpose.  It is provided "as is" without express or
 * implied warranty.
 
With one restriction.

You may not re-license this code under the GNU General Public License or
even 
the Lesser GPL(LGPL) licenses, or any other viral license which requires the

forced release of source code as a condition for binary release.

CREDITS

Various people over the years have contributed to Netrek, many of their
names 
have been forgotten over the years.  It's impossible to name them all here,
but 
I shall try.

NetrekXP was derived from COW which lists these individuals as contributing:

Chris Guthrie, Ed James, Scott Silvey, and Kevin Smith,        Tedd Hadley,
Andy 
McFadden, Eric Mehlhaff, J. Mark Noworolski, Nick Trown, Lars Bernhardsson,
Sam 
Shen, Rick Weinstein,     Jeff Nelson, Jeff Waller, Robert Kenney, Steve 
Sheldon,    Jonathan Shekter, Dave Gosselin, Heiko Wengler, Neil Cook, Kurt 
Siegl and many others.  (They forgot Kevin Powell, Nathan Doss, Michael
Kantner)

Special thanks should be given to Jonathan Shekter for doing the original 
Windows port of COW-lite.

Further thanks should go to Shawn Collenburg for adapting the COW-lite
changes 
to COW.

Extra Special Thanks should go to Rony Muliana for the Rabbit Ear bitmaps!
They RULE!

Special thanks for the getname.c ideas that came from Greg Chung.  

Many ideas adapted from COW-lite came from Kevin Powell and Jeff Nelson.

Many of the bitmaps were taken from Paradise version of the Netrek client.
I am 
not sure who to credit for these, but Michael Kellen's name has come up in
past 
discussions.  That probably also means Michael McGrath, Brandon Gillepsie
and 
others helped, possibly.

Joe Rumsey should be credited, as I'm sure he did something useful at some
point. :)

Trent Piepho is given thanks for pointing out some major bugs, giving some 
feedback on the Observer filter(which needs Server support and doesn't seem
to 
work, but ohwell) and probably for even contributing some code that nobody
knows 
about.

ORIGINAL COPYRIGHT NOTICES

/*
   Copyright 1989               Kevin P. Smith
   Scott Silvey

   Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this
   software and its documentation for any purpose and without
   fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright
   notice appear in all copies.
 */


/* Copyright (c) 1986   Chris Guthrie
 * 
 * Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its
 * documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted, provided
 * that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that
 * copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting
 * documentation.  No representations are made about the suitability of this
 * software for any purpose.  It is provided "as is" without express or
 * implied warranty.
 * 
 * ----------------------------------------------------------- Copyright
1989
 * Kevin P. Smith Scott Silvey
 * 
 * ditto.
 * 
 * ----------------------------------------------------------- Copyright
1993
 * 
 * As above.  Use at your own risk.
 * 
 * COW (BRM) authors (including but not limitted to: Kevin Powell Nick Trown
 * Jeff Nelson Kurt Siegl)
 * ----------------------------------------------------------- Copyright
1994
 * 
 * As above.
 * 
 * Hockey Lines added to COW by Nathan Doss Michael Kantner
 *
 * ----------------------------------------------------------- Copyright
1998
 * As above.
 *
 * Netrek 1999
 * Steve Sheldon (sheldon at visi.com)
 *
 * ----------------------------------------------------------- Copyright
2002
 *
 * As above.
 *
 * Netrek XP Mod
 * Stas Pirogov (keyos at keyos.org)
 *
 * ----------------------------------------------------------- Copyright
2006
 *
 * As above.
 *
 * Netrek XP
 * Bill Balcerski
 *