@fluffypony;

Thankyou for your response.

If they are the same people, changing what the copywrite says doesn't mean anything. If they are not the same people, it's possible that it was initially given to the Cryptonote developers, but both parties decided that it should go to the Bytecoin developers. There are several things that could have happened; we don't know.

As far as them being separate entities, it's pretty clear that they are separate entities now. Them being separate entities in the past? It appears that they probably were, but it says that they worked closely together. Maybe some of the people where in both groups. We don't know; it's unclear. If they were separate entities and worked closely together, it's reasonable to say that both groups were involved in developing the basecode.

From the references you gave, to reach the conclusion that the Bytecoin developers took the Cryptonote developers code and don't deserve any credit for development seems pretty far fetched to me. Even if they don't deserve all the credit, they deserve part of the credit for sure. And usually the way it is, the persons who actually write the code or their employers get copywrite credit. So even if many of the ideas came from the Crytonote developers, if the Bytecoin developers actually wrote the code, the copywrites should be assigned to them. Copywrites are not given for ideas, they are given for actual code written. If the Crytonote developers wanted legal credit for their ideas, they would have had to patent them. That could have been the reason why the copywrite was changed.