FWIW, the James project recently, quickly, and painlessly removed all
@author tags from our codebase. No one objected. On the other hand,
Stefano says that Cocoon is the opposite. I think that the real issue isn't
the author tags, but whether or not they exacerabate another problem.
I think that all projects can suffer from "its-mine-itis" ... removing
author tags doesn't erase an author's memory, nor prevent authors from being
proprietary about their donation. On the flip side, an argument is made
that by not having author tags, and by ensuring that the ASF copyright is on
each file, over time people will be more inclined to see the code donations
as being owned by the ASF as a community property, regardless of origin.
Communities should not use author tags to fall back on why code isn't
maintained. Contributors should not see author tags as suggesting that an
author be consulted before making a change. I know that some of you would
like to be consulted, but if there is any consultation over some code, it
should be directed to the Community.
The primary reason claimed for keeping author tags appears to be for credit
taking and resuming making. I don't believe that any employer sophisticated
enough to want to know who did what is going to care about author tags. If
a prospective developer came to me claiming experience in some area based
upon any project, an author tag wouldn't be particularly meaningful, and a
review of the CVS would be necessary if that coding experience really were a
key issue, along with an interview covering the key issues. How can anyone
claim to have authored some piece of code if a dozen other people have been
making changes over time since it was donated? The very premise of using an
author tag in that manner implies a proprietary view of the source code.
Personally, I don't have any strong feelings either way about the presence
or not of an author tag. More likely as not, they become a bit of a PITA
because a lot of people may contribute to some code over time, and then you
really don't have an author other than the Community. But I do have strong
feelings regarding proprietary attitudes towards code. What tactics and
tools the Community wants to use to break people of such a bad habit is up
to the Community.
--- Noel
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