Hello,
I believe the Derby community has expressed that @author tags are not to
be used in the Derby source code (see
http://www.nabble.com/-VOTE---Approve-coding-conventions-for-the-Derby-project-tf2093528.html#a5771954
and http://wiki.apache.org/db-derby/VoteResults )
For me, I think the main point in not using it, is to avoid "claiming
ownership" for pieces of code, since Derby is developed as an
open-source project.
The existing author tags are severely outdated and inaccurate due to
multiple changes after the tags were added (and not updated).
Some of the tags refer to people whose names I have never seen on the
Derby developer list.
I think the primary mechanism to get hold of people having written a
specific piece of code, if that need arises, is the Derby developer
list. If this fails, a more directed communication attempt might be
possible by digging into the Subversion history.
I had a quick look at the current status:
527 files (79 of these in derbyTesting) have an @author tag.
There are around 29 distinct "authors", some of these are not active in
the community any more (or never were, as far as I can tell).
Is a single Jira and a single patch for removing these going to far?
In my opinion, these tags provide no valuable information to the
community. I can craft the patch, unless someone else want to practice
scripting and making/verifying a patch ;)
--
Kristian
