Re: Theft of authorship
On Thu, 7 Jun 2001, Ceki Gülcü wrote: Hi Jon, I am referring to otherwise honest people who choose to contribute their enhancements back to the project. They create new classes but in the process remove the names of previous authors. They do this in good-faith as otherwise they would not have contributed their code. I think it is a question of culture/custom. It could be as innocent as someone not understanding that multiple @author tags are legal. But you don't know until you ask to the individuals involved why this happened, and encourage them to behave differently. I do not think we have a document outlining authorship rules. Does anyone know one? Regards, Ceki I think this is really a significant question. How significant a patch does it take for someone to legitimately be considered an additional author of a particular source file? Attribution in a CVS commit should always be there -- but is that really enough. Unfortunately, I don't have time at the moment to come up with ideas for a document describing reasonable policies for making such a decision -- but it would be useful to have such a thing (i.e. I vote +0 :-). Craig At 11:51 07.06.2001 -0700, you wrote: on 6/7/01 11:42 AM, Ceki Gülcü [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This comes up from time to time and usually has me jump through the roof. Good willing contributors, take a piece of existing log4j code, modify or enhance it, but remove the previous author's names. They then post their code as if it was their own. Regardless of how much they modified the code, by removing the previous author's names they are committing theft. I find this very disturbing. What do others think? What can we do to combat this phenomenon? Regards, Ceki There is a difference between doing this accidentally and doing it on purpose. If it is determined that it is done on purpose and the people who did it refuse to follow the license, then the Jakarta PMC should be notified and we can sick the ASF Legal team on the problem. Note, this seems like it would be a last resort type of situation. The best is to try to at least discuss with the villains (jokingly said) first and make sure that it was not intentional. -jon -- Open source is not available to commercial companies. -Steve Balmer, CEO Microsoft http://www.suntimes.com/output/tech/cst-fin-micro01.html - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Ceki Gülcü - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Theft of authorship
I almost forgot. A corollary of the 10+ lines authorship rule is that if you copy-and-paste over ten lines of code then you should grant the author of the 10+ lines authorship status on your code that imports the 10+ lines. If the copy-and-pasted code has a different license/copyright then you must also ask for permission. Ceki At 11:00 08.06.2001 +0200, you wrote: At 01:24 08.06.2001 -0700, Craig R. McClanahan wrote: I think this is really a significant question. How significant a patch does it take for someone to legitimately be considered an additional author of a particular source file? Attribution in a CVS commit should always be there -- but is that really enough. Unfortunately, I don't have time at the moment to come up with ideas for a document describing reasonable policies for making such a decision -- but it would be useful to have such a thing (i.e. I vote +0 :-). The rule I use is to be liberal when granting authorship but extremely conservative in removing authorship. Ten lines of new code turns a contributor to an author for the relevant file. In some rather rare cases, small ( 5 lines) but insightful changes can have a big impact. Consequently they merit authorship and even committer status. In principle, authorship can never be removed regardless of how much one changes the original code. After 65 iterations it might well be the case that not one single lines survives from the original code. That still does not justify the removal of the original author's name. On the other hand, authorship is not viral. If someone creates a new class extending a class that I wrote, that does not make me an author of the extending class. I religiously follow these rules and expect everyone else in the log4j community to do the same. Regards, Ceki -- Ceki Gülcü - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Theft of authorship
At 01:24 08.06.2001 -0700, Craig R. McClanahan wrote: I think this is really a significant question. How significant a patch does it take for someone to legitimately be considered an additional author of a particular source file? Attribution in a CVS commit should always be there -- but is that really enough. Unfortunately, I don't have time at the moment to come up with ideas for a document describing reasonable policies for making such a decision -- but it would be useful to have such a thing (i.e. I vote +0 :-). The rule I use is to be liberal when granting authorship but extremely conservative in removing authorship. Ten lines of new code turns a contributor to an author for the relevant file. In some rather rare cases, small ( 5 lines) but insightful changes can have a big impact. Consequently they merit authorship and even committer status. In principle, authorship can never be removed regardless of how much one changes the original code. After 65 iterations it might well be the case that not one single lines survives from the original code. That still does not justify the removal of the original author's name. On the other hand, authorship is not viral. If someone creates a new class extending a class that I wrote, that does not make me an author of the extending class. I religiously follow these rules and expect everyone else in the log4j community to do the same. Regards, Ceki - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Theft of authorship
Hi Jon, I am referring to otherwise honest people who choose to contribute their enhancements back to the project. They create new classes but in the process remove the names of previous authors. They do this in good-faith as otherwise they would not have contributed their code. I think it is a question of culture/custom. I do not think we have a document outlining authorship rules. Does anyone know one? Regards, Ceki At 11:51 07.06.2001 -0700, you wrote: on 6/7/01 11:42 AM, Ceki Gülcü [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This comes up from time to time and usually has me jump through the roof. Good willing contributors, take a piece of existing log4j code, modify or enhance it, but remove the previous author's names. They then post their code as if it was their own. Regardless of how much they modified the code, by removing the previous author's names they are committing theft. I find this very disturbing. What do others think? What can we do to combat this phenomenon? Regards, Ceki There is a difference between doing this accidentally and doing it on purpose. If it is determined that it is done on purpose and the people who did it refuse to follow the license, then the Jakarta PMC should be notified and we can sick the ASF Legal team on the problem. Note, this seems like it would be a last resort type of situation. The best is to try to at least discuss with the villains (jokingly said) first and make sure that it was not intentional. -jon -- Open source is not available to commercial companies. -Steve Balmer, CEO Microsoft http://www.suntimes.com/output/tech/cst-fin-micro01.html - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Ceki Gülcü - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Theft of authorship
I know the feeling... I don't think there is too much to do about it - the licence allows that, as long as they keep the Apache copyright. Costin --- Ceki Gülcü [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Jon, I am referring to otherwise honest people who choose to contribute their enhancements back to the project. They create new classes but in the process remove the names of previous authors. They do this in good-faith as otherwise they would not have contributed their code. I think it is a question of culture/custom. I do not think we have a document outlining authorship rules. Does anyone know one? Regards, Ceki At 11:51 07.06.2001 -0700, you wrote: on 6/7/01 11:42 AM, Ceki Gülcü [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This comes up from time to time and usually has me jump through the roof. Good willing contributors, take a piece of existing log4j code, modify or enhance it, but remove the previous author's names. They then post their code as if it was their own. Regardless of how much they modified the code, by removing the previous author's names they are committing theft. I find this very disturbing. What do others think? What can we do to combat this phenomenon? Regards, Ceki There is a difference between doing this accidentally and doing it on purpose. If it is determined that it is done on purpose and the people who did it refuse to follow the license, then the Jakarta PMC should be notified and we can sick the ASF Legal team on the problem. Note, this seems like it would be a last resort type of situation. The best is to try to at least discuss with the villains (jokingly said) first and make sure that it was not intentional. -jon -- Open source is not available to commercial companies. -Steve Balmer, CEO Microsoft http://www.suntimes.com/output/tech/cst-fin-micro01.html - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Ceki Gülcü - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] __ Do You Yahoo!? Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail - only $35 a year! http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Theft of authorship
If these people have comitter status, they could loose it quickly. Why didn't they just append their name... - Henri Gomez ___[_] EMAIL : [EMAIL PROTECTED](. .) PGP KEY : 697ECEDD...oOOo..(_)..oOOo... PGP Fingerprint : 9DF8 1EA8 ED53 2F39 DC9B 904A 364F 80E6 -Original Message- From: Ceki Gülcü [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, June 07, 2001 8:43 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Theft of authorship Hello, This comes up from time to time and usually has me jump through the roof. Good willing contributors, take a piece of existing log4j code, modify or enhance it, but remove the previous author's names. They then post their code as if it was their own. Regardless of how much they modified the code, by removing the previous author's names they are committing theft. I find this very disturbing. What do others think? What can we do to combat this phenomenon? Regards, Ceki - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Theft of authorship
on 6/7/01 12:18 PM, Ceki Gülcü [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Jon, I am referring to otherwise honest people who choose to contribute their enhancements back to the project. They create new classes but in the process remove the names of previous authors. They do this in good-faith as otherwise they would not have contributed their code. I think it is a question of culture/custom. If it is new classes (as you say above), then there is no need to give prior credit because it is a new work. If they are contributing code based on someone else's code and they remove the previous credit, then I think that a gentle reminder is all that is needed here. I'm sorry, but I don't see this as a major deal. It is simply an education thing. I seriously doubt that these people are trying to steal work or take someone else's credit...especially if they are contributing code... I do not think we have a document outlining authorship rules. Does anyone know one? Regards, Ceki I don't think there is one, but it is real easy to create one: #1. All code is copyright the ASF and must have the license on it. #2. Authorship is defined in @author tags and appropriate credit should be given for contributed work. -jon -- Open source is not available to commercial companies. -Steve Balmer, CEO Microsoft http://www.suntimes.com/output/tech/cst-fin-micro01.html - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Theft of authorship
Jon Stevens at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: on 6/7/01 11:42 AM, Ceki Gülcü [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This comes up from time to time and usually has me jump through the roof. Good willing contributors, take a piece of existing log4j code, modify or enhance it, but remove the previous author's names. They then post their code as if it was their own. Regardless of how much they modified the code, by removing the previous author's names they are committing theft. I find this very disturbing. What do others think? What can we do to combat this phenomenon? Regards, Ceki There is a difference between doing this accidentally and doing it on purpose. If it is determined that it is done on purpose and the people who did it refuse to follow the license, then the Jakarta PMC should be notified and we can sick the ASF Legal team on the problem. Note, this seems like it would be a last resort type of situation. The best is to try to at least discuss with the villains (jokingly said) first and make sure that it was not intentional. I remember decompiling some classes of a servlet engine back in 1997... That was quite fun, too bad that the ASF wasn't there at the time, because the villain was a _real_ d**k (but he's rich now, crap! :) Pier - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
