Philip Olson wrote: > It's easy to say "credit everyone" but implementing this in a fair,
I think you'll find that I didn't say that here. > The removed text in those PDO docs did not follow the guidelines so it > was a bug. Attribution is a bug!? > Nowhere else does text exist like this so what makes the PDO > HOWTO so special? I think this is one of the first cases where an external entity has contributed a significant portion of text to the manual, and that that has coincided with the people involved actually knowing how to correctly express authorship using docbook. > If a person and/or company absolutely insists on > inserting copyright/author information into a file then they need not > commit it to the phpdoc CVS module because nobody deserves special > treatment or owns certain text in the manual. Actually, those people do own the copyright on their contributions to the manual, and I think (IANAL), that they are legally allowed to indicate that. > Bill and Rick have now appropriately been > added to the contributors list, a list that Wez is already on. Did you also add IBM to that list? They are a copyright holder too. Just to be clear, I didn't even notice that my name was one of those removed. I don't particularly care where my name is in the manual; I'm reacting in this thread because I firmly believe that two of the most disrespectful things that one can do to a open contributor is take their work without giving credit, and to remove attribution from their work. I suspect that Bill and Rick would not have found their way into the contributors list if I hadn't gotten involved. I also find the attitude expressed above about making contributions to be a practical blocker for anyone adding any substantial text in the future, and personally find it insulting. I don't mean to come across all high-and-mighty, or holier-than-thou, but I want to let you know that I feel very strongly that php-doc is moving in the wrong direction here. I'm bowing out from php-doc now. I enjoyed contributing what I did, but don't think it will be the same going forward. If I might suggest one last thing before I depart; on a technical level, docbook is designed to hold information in a structured and parseable format. I recommend that you use it to retain authorship information and customize the XSL to prevent it from appearing in the online manual, if that really is how you want to do things moving forward. --Wez.
