Re: [gentoo-dev] AUTHORS file for portage repository

[Matt Turner]

On Tue, Nov 27, 2018 at 12:11 PM Rich Freeman <rich0@g.o> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Nov 27, 2018 at 2:58 PM Matt Turner <mattst88@g.o> wrote:
> >
> > What Copyright-owner header are you talking about?
>
> We would create one, just as we've created bugzilla tags in git for
> closing bugs/etc.  Surely putting one line in a commit is no more
> difficult than putting one file in a repository?  Indeed anybody can
> start sticking such a tag in commits today without any involvement
> from anybody else.
>
> > You've been the
> > most outspoken opponent of using what appears to be the standard
> > attribution form specified in GLEP-76
>
> When have I been opposed to anything in GLEP 76?  I'll admit that I

Now what I said. You've been the most outspoken opponent of using the
standard attribution format specified in GLEP-76. You know, the one
that says

Copyright YEARS MAIN-CONTRIBUTOR [OTHER-CONTRIBUTOR]... [and others]

and would suggest that it's allowable for Sony's name to be listed as
the MAIN-CONTRIBUTOR instead of Gentoo Authors.

> don't 100% agree with everything in there, but I'm fine with following
> the GLEP as it is written.  Multi-line copyright notices aren't in
> there, and the intent was never to be accumulating copyright holders
> on the single notice line.  An authors file was a compromise I wasn't
> a huge fan of, but I'm suggesting that if we have one it ought to be
> auto-generated (presumably with the work being done by somebody who
> actually wants the file to be there).
>
> Also, GLEP 76 as it is written says: "Projects using this scheme must
> track authorship in a VCS, unless they list all authors of
> copyrightable contributions in an AUTHORS file."
>
> So, a VCS is the PREFERRED way of doing it.  The alternative is
> listing ALL authors in the authors file.  Right now it seems like
> people are advocating for only listing some authors.

Let's not pretend that the authors of the GLEP (you're listed first,
by the way!) foresaw these issues (and rather obvious ones at that, I
might add). I'm already having to communicate the authors' intentions
and how they're different from what regular folks would think after
reading the GLEP (see:
https://github.com/gentoo/gentoo/pull/10481#issuecomment-442175181)

So let's satisfy everyone and be done with it: Let's put AUTHORS in
Git with a section header that states that these Copyright holders are
not obvious from the git history. This is where Sony would go. Then
let's append the output of "git log --format='%aN <%aE>" during
metadata generation or whenever stuff like that gets expanded. That
output is currently 36k FWIW.

Or, I don't know. Come up with something better and continue
bikeshedding. I won't.

> > I know mailing list debates are your personal pastime but this is a
> > real wasteoftime.
>
> You're the one advocating for changing the status quo.  I'm happy if
> we drop the whole topic entirely.  You certainly can't point fingers
> at others when you're proposing doing something differently.  We
> wouldn't be having this discussion if some contributors were unwilling
> to contribute under our current standards.

At what point would you say maybe gentoo-{dev,proj}@ has heard enough
of me for a while? I'd wager that you have an order of magnitude more
emails to these lists this calendar year than commits to gentoo.git. I
see 20 commits and I'm not going to try count all your messages.