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CREDITS.md

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+# Credits & Prior Art
+
+Mestre is built on top of substantial work by others. This document records
+the specific provenance of vendored code and the people who made the project
+feasible from day one.
+
+## Hardware enablement (X6200)
+
+### Aether project
+**[gdyuldin/AetherX6200Buildroot](https://github.com/gdyuldin/AetherX6200Buildroot)**
+
+Mestre vendors the following from the Aether project:
+
+- `br2_external/board/x6200/dts/sun8i-r16-x6200.dts` — device tree
+- `br2_external/board/x6200/uboot/uboot.config` — U-Boot defconfig
+- `br2_external/board/x6200/uboot/boot.cmd` — U-Boot boot script
+- `br2_external/board/x6200/linux/patches/0001-drm-panel-jinglitai-jlt4013a.patch` —
+  LCD panel driver, forward-ported from Aether's `lcd.patch`
+
+Aether's project goal (improving the X6200 as a transceiver) differs from
+Mestre's (using the X6200 as a control head for other SDRs), but Aether's
+upstream-friendly hardware enablement work made this project feasible
+without reverse-engineering the vendor kernel. All vendored files retain
+their original copyright headers.
+
+### Linux-sunxi community
+**apritzel** (#linux-sunxi @ OFTC) — provided the device-tree guidance for the
+X6200, acknowledged in the DTS source itself.
+
+### LCD panel driver
+**Rui Oliveira** and **Oleg Belousov** (2022) — original authors of the
+Jinglitai JLT4013A panel driver. Their copyright headers are preserved
+in the patch.
+
+## SDR stack
+
+### piHPSDR
+**John Melton (G0ORX/N6LYT)** and contributors — piHPSDR, the GTK3 SDR
+console Mestre wraps. Mestre's design relies on piHPSDR's existing MIDI
+control infrastructure, which lets us avoid patching the console itself.
+Source: https://github.com/g0orx/pihpsdr
+
+### WDSP
+**Warren Pratt (NR0V)** — the WDSP DSP library that piHPSDR depends on.
+Linux port maintained by G0ORX. Source: https://github.com/g0orx/wdsp
+
+### SoapySDR / SoapyRemote
+**Pothosware** and contributors — the vendor- and platform-neutral SDR
+support library and its network-transparent extension.
+Source: https://github.com/pothosware
+
+### Hermes-Lite 2
+**Steve Haynal (KF7O)** and the Hermes-Lite 2 community — the
+open-hardware HF SDR transceiver Mestre is initially designed to control.
+The HL2 is the canonical target, but Mestre should work with any
+HPSDR-protocol radio piHPSDR supports.
+
+## Buildroot
+
+**The Buildroot project** — the embedded Linux build system Mestre uses.
+Mestre tracks the Buildroot 2025.02 LTS line.
+Source: https://buildroot.org/
+
+## Smaller borrowings
+
+- The MIDI input bridge concept and initial Python sketch (`mestred`) was
+  developed during earlier prototyping by the project author against the
+  Aether-derived image; the production version is rewritten as a proper
+  Python package but owes its shape to that earlier work.