Greetings Roy, and thank you for your enduring contribution,
On 6/12/2026 3:23 PM, Roy T. Fielding wrote:
On Jun 10, 2026, at 1:11 PM, Rich Bowen<[email protected]> wrote:Since the late 1900s, we have had this page -https://httpd.apache.org/contributors/ - that listed contributors to the project. It was brought to my attention today that most of the links on that page were dead and/or pointed to sites no longer actually owned by the person referenced. It also contained dozens of email addresses for people who are now assuredly in every spam database ever. I’ve done some cleanup. If you are an httpd committer, you can edit (or add, or remove) your record on that page. It’s an interesting historical artifact, but it’s far from complete, and many of the remaining entries list long-past employers. Not harmful, per se, but also not terribly valuable for anything other than being a historical artifact. What do folks think about keeping this, going forward?I think we do a poor job of documenting contributions. This page was an exercise in self-documentation, which failed miserably. Using a link to the github commits would be even worse (#commits != #contributions, especially in a code base that predates cvs).
I consider it ideal to document contributions, not just contributors. So I think linking to commits is helpful. Obviously, such a link should not *replace* current contents though.
The ABOUT_APACHE file was the original project compromise on attribution, but that became a historical artifact as soon as I wrote it.
I see several topics in ABOUT_APACHE:
1. the (target) product (just a short description)
2. the project
3. contributors (credits)
1. the PMC
4. history
The intent was to update it over time to reflect the current group of maintainers above the history portion. Instead, the historical artifact remained fixed and the newer (at the time) bits relegated to this old CGI-generated page.
Ah. But even in 2000, the list was introduced with:
By the end of February, eight core contributors formed the foundation of the original Apache Group:…which sounds like it was meant to stay at that? Or do I misunderstand the part you are referring to? https://github.com/apache/httpd/commit/9409605c72f883672f3e22c3dfd63167a5ffe716#diff-a1269d16460663446d15369cd3760c83880fbc8ccec434d56d334a7f9f36e617R30-R35
From what I can see:
1. is treated in the homepage, README, ABOUT_APACHE and ABOUT_APACHE.html
2. is treated in ABOUT_APACHE, ABOUT_APACHE.html and other pages
3. are treated/given in ABOUT_APACHE, ABOUT_APACHE.html and contributors/
1. is only treated in ABOUT_APACHE
4. is treated in ABOUT_APACHE (badly outdated), ABOUT_APACHE.html
(accurate but now highly incomplete).
I would prefer to document the major contributors in a CREDITS file in source, remove the database, and link to the ABOUT_APACHE history on the website.
I do not know which database you are referring to, but I would agree that shipping all of the above in some ABOUT_APACHE file seems like a historical artifact of pre-WWW times. The little content which is not already duplicated (perhaps just #3.1) would―indeed, if that is what you are suggesting―better be treated somewhere more focused. The PMC varies and would better be treated on the website.
As for contributors, there are pros and cons to each, but distributing a list sounds good legally. You would indeed expect that in an AUTHORS, CREDITS or copyright file.
But I don't know if it's possible to do that without offending someone.
I don't understand what your concern is (what could offend and why).
[…] ....Roy
-- 🅭🄍:https://www.philippecloutier.com/Common+infrastructure+licensing#list Philippe Cloutier
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