On Fri, 09 Oct 2009, David Golden wrote: > Though to be fair, "author" is currently *required*, and I like the > idea that there be a required point of contact. However, I don't like > the idea of a mandatory "resources" field. > > How about if it gets renamed "auth" and the description is "author" or > designated "authority" to respond to issues. > > Doesn't that accomplish what we need?
I would prefer "maintainer" to make it absolutely clear that the contact in that field does not claim authorship of the distribution. I always feel uneasy to put my name/email address into "author" when all I'm doing is keeping the module in working condition on CPAN. I then still include the original author (without email address) to provide some kind of attribution. My sentiments would largely remain the same if the field was just renamed to "auth(ority)", as I would still feel that the original author should somehow be mentioned too. But if it was just "maintainer" then there is no problem dropping all previous authors who are no longer involved in the maintenance (they still get their credit in the POD section on authorship and copyright anyways). I think it would also be good to require (or at least recommend) that this field contains a list of email addresses, and not just some free format text. If you cannot contact someone through this field, then the information belongs in the POD and not into META.yml. Cheers, -Jan
