I think we may be reading too much into the ASF guidelines by recommending we remove @author tags. I know for sure that Apache is not enforcing this guideline very strictly. For example, look at the author tags for this source file:
It is a strong SHOULD. And I kinda agree with it.
I agree with Murray: @author tags are valuable because they help identify expertise and knowledge associated with particular bits of code. They are good for "archeology." Removing them would do more harm than good.
I disagree. The SVN log and annotations very clearly spell out who did what. Are you sure @author-tags are updated every single time? If the file has patches from several dozens of files over several years, who really is the author? Is anyone removing @author -tags from code which no longer has any pieces of the original contribution left?
I'm going to remove all @author tags with my name on them anyway and not add any new ones. Personally, I would much rather have the team get the credit than myself. If anyone needs to point any blaming fingers at anyone, the SVN history tells all that is necessary.
To me, the presence of @author-tags is useless metadata, which causes more harm than good. Probably because I get all the emails asking for help, and I need to constantly defer people to the mailing list.
/Janne
