Quoting Paul Sundling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > I can see a lot of valid points in the article. I also don't buy the > positive side regarding author tags helping point out who to go to for > help on a particular file. Whatever the final decision, the philosophy > should be documented on the web site in the section where it talks about > how to help. There are however two reasons why I think such artifacts > as author tags are good (although I think CVS comments are better if > consistent). > > 1. For non-committers, it gives us warm fuzzies. It's like a little > flag that says I actually made my contribution to open source, like more > of us out there should. You can't go in CVS and see that people like me > added a patch, unless a committer actually takes time to actually > mention it without an author tag.
That particular practice is something we focus on pretty heavily on Struts -- the only times I've ever seen someone forget this was an oversight or a too-quick press of the submit button; in those cases, the standard practice has been to note the contribution in a message to STRUTS-DEV (where the CVS messages also go) in order to ensure that credit is logged someplace historical. If there were some template text, > like "Based on a patch contributed to ASF by [EMAIL PROTECTED] related > to bugzilla # ....." in the CVS log I think that would be good enough. > The CVS commit template already includes "Submitted by:" for Struts, to nag us committers into remembering to give credit where credit is due. > Even though I've had a VERY VERY minor contribution, it was quite a rush > to have an author tag on a minor support file. It made me feel like a > part of the project and it made me want to get more involved. [I'm > getting into unit testing, so I figure I might make contributions there > first down the line.] I would never want to cause any resentment > against those doing the brunt of the work or claim that I'm on the same > level. At the same time, it's nice to have a little reminder somewhere > that I'm making a contribution, however small. > Every committer to Struts will *welcome* contributions on unit testing! But I guess I need to ask ... does getting properly acknowledged in the CVS commit messages give you the same level of warm fuzzies? I ask because that is an automatic process (at least when I do commits based off a contributed patch); but it's a judgement call on whether the change was significant enough to warrant adding an @author tag -- where do you draw the line? A one-line typo fix? A ten line patch? A hundred line new method? A complete new class? There's no decision needed for CVS commit attribution -- and that attribution is visible to the world at large too: http://cvs.apache.org/viewcvs/jakarta-struts/ > 2. There should be some tracking for the origins of code in case we ever > get attacked by a company like SCO. Maybe there's already some cross > referencing system that I'm not aware of between bugzilla and CVS that > already takes care of this. I guess this is counter to legal protection > under the ASF umbrella. Let's say I work at Top Secret Corp or Run By > Lawyers Inc. and I submit a patch that my employer would see as > infringing code. It's good code and one of committers (David Graham for > instance, since I'm replying to his message) commits it into CVS. It > now looks like David was the source for the code and when Top Secret > Corp lawyers started sniffing around it'd be harder to find out the true > source. I would guess this might end up being a major issue depending > on how the SCO law suit ends. > This is one of the topics that is being addressed in discussions on an updated Apache Software Foundation license that is currently being discussed and reviewed. But your point is taken ... attribution is defensive as well as warm-fuzzy-producing :-). > Paul Sundling > Craig --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
