On 05/10/2012 11:32 AM, Bruce Momjian wrote:
On Thu, May 10, 2012 at 11:26:14AM -0400, Robert Haas wrote:
There are some cases, like index-only scans, where I think it would be
very hard to get down to one name, because four different people wrote
code that ended up being part of that. Now you could probably get it
down to just two by cutting Heikki (who isn't listed) and Ibrar (who
is) but saying that only one of Tom and I did that feature would be
quite misleading regardless of who you picked. Similarly, there are a
couple of patches that I worked on with Simon where crediting only one
of us would be wrong, regardless of which one you picked, and I think
there are other cases of this involving other people as well. So I
think a hard and fast rule of crediting exactly one person is not
going to work, but limiting it to the primary author or authors is
feasible.
Honestly, I'm leaning more and more toward the view that we should
just rip the names out entirely. I mean, look at something like
sortsupport. That would never have gotten done without Peter
Geoghegan's work on it, but the code *as committed* was half mine and
half Tom's. So what are you going to do with that? It's weird to
credit Peter and not Tom or I, and it's weird to credit Tom or I and
not Peter, and it's even weird of you credit all three of us because
any decision about who to put first is arguable and maybe wrong. The
simplest solution to my mind is to credit no one, which at least has
the advantage of being unarguably uniform.
Keep in mind that the reason I originally had names in the release notes
was so I could remember who to email when something broke. That really
isn't the case anymore.
I agree that making these names give _credit_ is never going to work.
Robert's example above is very clear on that.
We could try cutting it down to one name and see if we have any problems
with it. Robert is right that if you are thinking of this as "credit"
it is never going to work.
I don't really buy this at all. The fact that it's not perfect doesn't
mean that it's wrong. Just about the only reward we give contributors is
some kudos, and the more the better as far as I'm concerned. I'd almost
like to see a "Credits" section of the release notes, but if we're not
going to have that let's keep doing what we have been doing.
cheers
andrew
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