Mailing-List: contact general-help@incubator.apache.org; run by ezmlm
Message-ID: <3DC888E6.4090707@yahoo.com>
Date: Tue, 05 Nov 2002 20:13:42 -0700
From: David Shane Holden <dpejesh@yahoo.com>
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To: general@incubator.apache.org
Subject: Re: whoweare.html
References: <200211051249.HAA09632@devsys.jaguNET.com>
 <20021105163053.F7165@lyra.org> <3DC863B1.7070102@apache.org>
 <200211061147.16582.peter@apache.org> <3DC86A8C.5060107@apache.org>
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Nicola Ken Barozzi wrote:
> 
> :-? :-/
> 
> Just to make it clear before I get mistaken (not talking to Peter, but 
> as a general note), I'm not talking about code ownership.
> 
> In Cocoon and Forrest (the projects I'm more heavily involved as for 
> concrete commits), author tags are not a problem.
> I find it cool when I can see that a certain class was made by a certain 
> committer on some date, and changed by others, it gives you a sense of 
> what happened, and who you might ask to get futher advice on it eventually.
> 
> I tend to ask all developers to add their name to the authors with any 
> commit they make that has impacted on the code (ie not cosmetics), and 
> this levels the credit system. You never know from the authors if a 
> certain one has made 1000 lines of code or only one.
> 
> I find code ownership a problem that can and must be prevented and 
> resolved in the community. A trick that seasoned committers do on new 
> committers is to change their first commits and work on them, to show 
> that the code is of everyone. If they complain, it's time for a nice and 
> bold explanation.
>  From my experience on this, it's not something one forgets easily ;-)
> 
> One thing that *could* be a problem is that @author tags can give the 
> impression that a cretain piece of code is "maintained" by the authors, 
> or that they are responsible for it, and this can reduce peer review.
> 
> But honestly if it happens I doubt it's just because of the author tags, 
> and a missing tag cannot replace behaviour.
> 
> Also, having author tags shows where the "stakes" of the 
> committers=stakeholders of the code are.
> 
> Continuing a discussion had recently on the commons list, this has 
> impact on the vetos IIUC.
> 

Most of the information you mentioned above is stored in CVS and in more 
detail.  Cluttering up a file with a bunch of useless 'i did this, i did 
that' is pointless and redundant when CVS has it all saved anyway.

Just because someone authored the first version of a document or code 
doesn't mean they had any bearing on the current state of it.  It's lame 
to take credit for something that's been contributed to a community and 
being maintained by it.  IMO that individual is no longer the 
author/owner of it, the community is.

Now giving credit where credit is do is nice and that's why everything 
contributed to httpd gets a blurb in CVS which is more than sufficent.

Shane