AUTHORS material (re)started

[Graham Percival]

Long ago, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I was still an
undergraduate student, we had Documentation/topdocs/AUTHORS.texi,
and all was well.  At some point, we added a THANKS.  Somewhat
later, everybody stopped updating AUTHORS.  Right now, I'm not
even certain if the THANKS is maintained.

As part of the new website, we have a shiny new place for the
authors list; I've begun working on this.  See:
    Documentation/general/basic-authors.itexi
which is included in general (.html, .pdf, .info) and will also be
built as a top-level .txt file.

I want to junk THANKS, and migrate the old AUTHORS into the new
list.  We then have a single place to maintain.

- any volunteers to move the old AUTHORS into the new authors
  list, in particular checking urls, email addresses, and checking
  if people who listed email addresses want to keep them publicly
  visible?

- any volunteers to find anything in the various THANKS files
  throughout the ages and add anything relevant to the new
  authors list?

- I just realized that we might want to keep a list of "current
  contributors" distinct from contributors in general (in order
  to generate a THANKS if desired), so we'll need a few changes
  to basic-authors.itexi and community.itexi.


Please note that this has nothing to do with the copyright debate.
There only issues here are morally giving credit where it is due,
and good information presentation.

Cheers,
- Graham