On Fri, Feb 27, 2004 at 11:33:32AM +0100, Dirk-Willem van Gulik wrote: > On Feb 27, 2004, at 12:45 AM, Conal Tuohy wrote: > > >I don't think the ASF should discourage developers from keeping useful > >metadata about the code inside the source files. What better place to > >put the metadata than in the code? This makes it more likely to be > >used and kept up to date than if it was stored somewhere else, IMHO. > > One way to look at this is that @author tags are in a way factually > 'wrong'; in most cases it just signals which person wrote the first > skeleton of that code; but subsequently it was fixes, peer-reviewed and > looked at by a whole community. Also do not forget the many people in > your community which help with QA, Documentation, user-feedback and so > on. To put one person in the (hot) seat for what is essentially a > group effort is not quite right. > > Looking through the CVS logs of a few tomcat files: each block of 30 > lines seems to have had commits of at least 5 persons; with a median of > 6 and an average of 9. The average number of @author tags on those > arbitrary blocks is about 0.5. And that is not counting QA, docs, > suggestions of mailing lists, bug resolutions, user support. I.e. those > things which make tomcat such a great supported product. > > Secondly what we 'sell' as the ASF brand is a code base which is peer > reviewed, quality controlled and created by a sustainable group which > will survive the coming and going of volunteers. One where knowledge is > generally shared and not just depended on one single individual. This > is one of the key reasons why large companies, governments, etc have a > lot less qualms about using apache than using most other open source; > we mitigate the worry that it depends on a single person, and can > implode or fork without warning, right from the get-go. > > Finally - a lot of developers do live in countries where you can get > sued. The ASF can provide a certain level of protection; but this is > based on the KEY premisse that there is oversight and peer review. That > what we ship is a community product; and that everything is backed by > the community and cannot be attributed to a single person. Every commit > gets peer review; ever release requires +1s' and are backed by the > community as a whole. @author tags are by necessity incomplete and thus > portrait the situation inaccurately. Any hint or suggestion that parts > of the code are not a community product makes defence more complex and > expensive. We do not want to temp anyone - but rather present a clean > picture with no blemishes or easy go's. > > And to give this a positive slant; be -proud- of this culture; be proud > of being part of something larger of incredible quality. Each of you > did not just write a few pesky lines of code surrounded by an @author > tag; but where instrumental in getting the -whole- thing work ! And if > you are ever trying to understand why cocoon made it this far, and > other commercial/open-source projects did not, then do look there; > quality and a sense of long term stability. > > Take Care, Have fun, > > Dw
Thank you for this email. My +1 for removal of author tags is now whole hearted. Could we post something like this writeup in a committer tips area as an explanation of the policy? --Tim Larson
