Re: [all] Author tags redux
Geir Magnusson Jr wrote: On Dec 28, 2003, at 10:39 PM, Phil Steitz wrote: The subject of @author tags has been discussed on and off here and elsewhere with no apparent consensus. In a recent post to general@, Ted Husted pointed to this post http://tinyurl.com/yrlhu by Greg Stein to community at apache.org, which raises some disturbing legal and community issues around the use of @author tags. I am convinced by his arguments that we should eliminate @author tags uniformly once we clean up the web site and get the process of updating and publishing contributor lists routinized (read: complete the mavenization of the j-c web site). I'm not sure I buy the legal argument, as our CVS logs are public also, and it's easy to figure out who did what in a piece of questionable code. So you haven't really don't anything by removing the author tag - the author is still easily discoverable. As I understand Greg's argument (see paragraph that starts with From a legal standpoint) when your name is *in* the code with a tag that identifies you as the/an author, it is more likely that you may be named in a suit and it may be harder for the ASF to protect you. Commit logs are certainly discoverable, but commits are at the direction of the PMC which provides you (or the committer) with some legal cover, or so the theory goes. I think author tags are good as some/many/all people are proud to have their name on things that they work hard on and contribute. I'll be the first to admit the sense of pride that I felt when contributing something for the first time, and seeing my name on it. That is a valid point, but may be a little at odds with the equally valid point below. The valid point (IMO) I've heard in favor of removing them is that not having them can help the sense of group ownership and community. if I had to decide, as long as there is no additional liability in having the tag in the code, I'd be for letting people/components/etc choose to do what they feel is right. I agree that the decision should be at least at the component level. I guess we *could* allow contributors to decide, but that could result in some funny/misleading tags. Phil - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [all] Author tags redux
On Dec 28, 2003, at 10:39 PM, Phil Steitz wrote: The subject of @author tags has been discussed on and off here and elsewhere with no apparent consensus. In a recent post to general@, Ted Husted pointed to this post http://tinyurl.com/yrlhu by Greg Stein to community at apache.org, which raises some disturbing legal and community issues around the use of @author tags. I am convinced by his arguments that we should eliminate @author tags uniformly once we clean up the web site and get the process of updating and publishing contributor lists routinized (read: complete the mavenization of the j-c web site). I'm not sure I buy the legal argument, as our CVS logs are public also, and it's easy to figure out who did what in a piece of questionable code. So you haven't really don't anything by removing the author tag - the author is still easily discoverable. I think author tags are good as some/many/all people are proud to have their name on things that they work hard on and contribute. I'll be the first to admit the sense of pride that I felt when contributing something for the first time, and seeing my name on it. The valid point (IMO) I've heard in favor of removing them is that not having them can help the sense of group ownership and community. if I had to decide, as long as there is no additional liability in having the tag in the code, I'd be for letting people/components/etc choose to do what they feel is right. geir I assume that this needs to be decided for each of the components separately. With that in mind, I would like to start by removing/omitting @author tags from [uid] and I would like to propose that we pull them out of [collections] and [lang] as and when we complete mavenization of the websites for these components (or otherwise publish a full and up-to-date contributors list). Now would be a good time to act on [collections], since we are about to cut a release. So...what do we think about pulling out the @author tags from [collections] and pushing out the maven site with 3.0? If we want to hold off on the mavenization until we have worked out the larger j-c site issues, we can just add a contributors page to the existing site to acknowledge contributors. If others are in favor, I will volunteer to grep out the @authors and do this. Phil - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Geir Magnusson Jr 203-247-1713(m) [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: [all] Author tags redux
Howdy, Hmm. I understand the reasoning in this thread and the referenced posts for removing the @author tags, but I still am not a big fan of the idea. The reason is that for a new contributor, as you say, it's a big thrill to have your name in a widely distributed source code file. We want to attract these new contributors, and this is a nice perk. Yes, it's in the changelog, but that's not as easy to find for all projects. I suppose we could put every contributor's name on a web page somewhere, but that's at least as much of a pain to maintain, because now you have at least two people involved: the contributor and the committer who has to edit the web page listing the contributors. I too have gotten personal emails regarding code I wrote in the past, and I don't mind them that much. I just tell people to email the appropriate mailing list. I recognize that the legal argument against having @author tags may trump all others, and if that's the case so be it. But I think we're taking away something very important: an attracting factor for new contributors, the ego factor that drives many open-source developers. So -0 from me on this proposal, and apologies for this rambling post, I'm mostly thinking by typing on this slow day. Happy holidays to all ;) Yoav Shapira Millennium ChemInformatics -Original Message- From: Simon Kitching [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, December 28, 2003 11:18 PM To: Jakarta Commons Developers List Subject: Re: [all] Author tags redux On Mon, 2003-12-29 at 16:39, Phil Steitz wrote: The subject of @author tags has been discussed on and off here and elsewhere with no apparent consensus. In a recent post to general@, Ted Husted pointed to this post http://tinyurl.com/yrlhu by Greg Stein to community at apache.org, which raises some disturbing legal and community issues around the use of @author tags. I am convinced by his arguments that we should eliminate @author tags uniformly once we clean up the web site and get the process of updating and publishing contributor lists routinized (read: complete the mavenization of the j-c web site). I'm +1 to removing author tags in general too. As an occasional contributor it is a rush to see your name in an author tag :-). But it also feels a bit excessive for small patches. And once you start submitting significant patches, everyone knows who you are anyway. If there is a website that contributors can point to and say look, that's me (eg for CVs) then I agree that author tags are not necessary. And the less clutter in the source files the better. Some system where the maven site had a list of contributors ordered by # of patches committed would be ideal though I can't immediately see how to implement that. I have also had people contact me directly when the message would have better been directed at the dev or user list; I presume the more prolific contributors would get this even worse. Removing author tags may help here. I do think that this issue should be reposted sometime after the 5th, when many more people would be back as opinions may vary. Of course for [collections], the main contributors seem to be working right now... - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] This e-mail, including any attachments, is a confidential business communication, and may contain information that is confidential, proprietary and/or privileged. This e-mail is intended only for the individual(s) to whom it is addressed, and may not be saved, copied, printed, disclosed or used by anyone else. If you are not the(an) intended recipient, please immediately delete this e-mail from your computer system and notify the sender. Thank you. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [all] Author tags redux
I am +1 to removing personal author tags, however there are two things I would want instead: 1) All names are added to the Maven project xml. This has been done for [lang] and [collections] AFAIN. 2) One author tag is added to all files @author Commons-Xxx team Stephen On Mon, 2003-12-29 at 16:39, Phil Steitz wrote: The subject of @author tags has been discussed on and off here and elsewhere with no apparent consensus. In a recent post to general@, Ted Husted pointed to this post http://tinyurl.com/yrlhu - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [all] Author tags redux
+1 to both. On Mon, 29 Dec 2003, Stephen Colebourne wrote: I am +1 to removing personal author tags, however there are two things I would want instead: 1) All names are added to the Maven project xml. This has been done for [lang] and [collections] AFAIN. 2) One author tag is added to all files @author Commons-Xxx team Stephen On Mon, 2003-12-29 at 16:39, Phil Steitz wrote: The subject of @author tags has been discussed on and off here and elsewhere with no apparent consensus. In a recent post to general@, Ted Husted pointed to this post http://tinyurl.com/yrlhu - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [all] Author tags redux
In response to Simon and Yoav's points about doing this with maven, I think it is quite possible. We already have contributors/ in the POM, and I think a slight change to the changes plugin [1] would allow us to account peoples' patches effectively. Perhaps an optional attribute to the action/ tage named submitted-by or something. Then, a custom goal in maven.xml (or a new plug in) would allow us to generate patch reports for non-committers. -- Ryan Hoegg ISIS Networks http://www.isisnetworks.net [1] http://maven.apache.org/reference/plugins/changes/ Simon Kitching wrote: If there is a website that contributors can point to and say look, that's me (eg for CVs) then I agree that author tags are not necessary. And the less clutter in the source files the better. Some system where the maven site had a list of contributors ordered by # of patches committed would be ideal though I can't immediately see how to implement that. and Shapira, Yoav wrote: We want to attract these new contributors, and this is a nice perk. Yes, it's in the changelog, but that's not as easy to find for all projects. I suppose we could put every contributor's name on a web page somewhere, but that's at least as much of a pain to maintain, because now you have at least two people involved: the contributor and the committer who has to edit the web page listing the contributors. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [all] Author tags redux
Feel free, I don't find @author useful enough to fight for it staying. Hen On Sun, 28 Dec 2003, Phil Steitz wrote: The subject of @author tags has been discussed on and off here and elsewhere with no apparent consensus. In a recent post to general@, Ted Husted pointed to this post http://tinyurl.com/yrlhu by Greg Stein to community at apache.org, which raises some disturbing legal and community issues around the use of @author tags. I am convinced by his arguments that we should eliminate @author tags uniformly once we clean up the web site and get the process of updating and publishing contributor lists routinized (read: complete the mavenization of the j-c web site). I assume that this needs to be decided for each of the components separately. With that in mind, I would like to start by removing/omitting @author tags from [uid] and I would like to propose that we pull them out of [collections] and [lang] as and when we complete mavenization of the websites for these components (or otherwise publish a full and up-to-date contributors list). Now would be a good time to act on [collections], since we are about to cut a release. So...what do we think about pulling out the @author tags from [collections] and pushing out the maven site with 3.0? If we want to hold off on the mavenization until we have worked out the larger j-c site issues, we can just add a contributors page to the existing site to acknowledge contributors. If others are in favor, I will volunteer to grep out the @authors and do this. Phil - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [all] Author tags redux
On Mon, 2003-12-29 at 16:39, Phil Steitz wrote: The subject of @author tags has been discussed on and off here and elsewhere with no apparent consensus. In a recent post to general@, Ted Husted pointed to this post http://tinyurl.com/yrlhu by Greg Stein to community at apache.org, which raises some disturbing legal and community issues around the use of @author tags. I am convinced by his arguments that we should eliminate @author tags uniformly once we clean up the web site and get the process of updating and publishing contributor lists routinized (read: complete the mavenization of the j-c web site). I'm +1 to removing author tags in general too. As an occasional contributor it is a rush to see your name in an author tag :-). But it also feels a bit excessive for small patches. And once you start submitting significant patches, everyone knows who you are anyway. If there is a website that contributors can point to and say look, that's me (eg for CVs) then I agree that author tags are not necessary. And the less clutter in the source files the better. Some system where the maven site had a list of contributors ordered by # of patches committed would be ideal though I can't immediately see how to implement that. I have also had people contact me directly when the message would have better been directed at the dev or user list; I presume the more prolific contributors would get this even worse. Removing author tags may help here. I do think that this issue should be reposted sometime after the 5th, when many more people would be back as opinions may vary. Of course for [collections], the main contributors seem to be working right now... - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
