Re: Removing in-source contribution records contributer

[Sean Young <sean@mess.org>]

On Fri, May 09, 2025 at 02:54:31PM +0200, Alejandro Colomar wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I've added to BCC everyone whose copyright notices have been removed
> (those that noted an email).  The full thread for this discussion can be
> found here:
> <https://lore.kernel.org/linux-man/jpin2dbnp5vpitnh7l4qmvkamzq3h3xljzsznrudgioox3nn72@57uybxbe3h4p/T/#u>
> 
> Please let me know if it's okay to you to transform your copyright
> notices to make them uniform?  That is, do you approve
> <https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/docs/man-pages/man-pages.git/commit/?id=9f2986c34166085225bb5606ebfd4952054e1657>
> in what affects you?

The normal way to do this is a Signed-off-by on a public list and then
collect those into the commit.

Sure I am okay with this but I don't see the point of this "process",
where agreements just collect in your mailboxes.


Sean

> 
> I've generated the BCC with
> 
> 	$ git show 9f2986c34166085225bb5606ebfd4952054e1657 -- man \
> 	| grep '^-[^-]' \
> 	| grep @ \
> 	| grep -o '[^     ]*@[^ ]*' \
> 	| sed 's/,//g' \
> 	| sed 's/\.$//' \
> 	| sed 's/.*(//' \
> 	| sed 's/<//' \
> 	| sed 's/>//' \
> 	| sed 's/\.)//' \
> 	| sed 's/)//' \
> 	| sort \
> 	| uniq \
> 	| sed 's/^/Bcc: /';
> 
> 
> Have a lovely day!
> Alex
> 
> On Tue, Apr 08, 2025 at 11:28:29PM +0200, Alejandro Colomar wrote:
> > Hi Carlos,
> > 
> > On Tue, Apr 08, 2025 at 04:18:35PM -0400, Carlos O'Donell wrote:
> > > On 4/8/25 8:42 AM, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> > > > Hi Alex,
> > > > 
> > > > At 2025-04-08T01:05:02+0200, Alejandro Colomar wrote:
> > > > > On Thu, Feb 13, 2025 at 12:20:58AM +0100, Alejandro Colomar wrote:
> > > > > > On Wed, Feb 12, 2025 at 05:02:10PM -0600, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> > > > > > > If you do this, I suggest you replace these lines with something
> > > > > > > like:
> > > > > > > 
> > > > > > > .\" See the Git revision history at
> > > > > > > .\"   $URL
> > > > > > > .\" for records of changes and contributors to this file.
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > Good idea.
> > > > > 
> > > > > I'm thinking I won't do that.  I don't want to add that overhead to
> > > > > each page.  People interested in the history of a page will already
> > > > > have a look at the git history, and there they'll find the old states
> > > > > of a page, in which they'll find this information.
> > > > > 
> > > > > And it would require some non-trivial work to add this note
> > > > > consistently.  I'll go with a removal without replacement, I think.
> > > > 
> > > > Acknowledged.  It's been a whole 7 weeks for so, so I don't clearly
> > > > remember my reasoning from February, but my suggestion may have been at
> > > > attempt to find a "conservative" alteration to file content or the
> > > > expressed meaning of the comments.
> > > > 
> > > > But, what's conservative in one dimension often is not in another, such
> > > > as "labor required".
> > > > 
> > > > I also agree that while Git is a complex suite of tools, "git log" is
> > > > not among its deeper magicks.  At least not when run without arguments.
> > > 
> > > We did something similar in glibc and created a CONTRIBUTED-BY file at the
> > > top-level and moved all contribution lines out of the respective
> > > files into the top-level file.
> > 
> > Yep, a CREDITS file would be interesting.  I wouldn't keep info about
> > which specific files were written by each contributor.  That seems
> > something more appripriate for git-log(1).  The pre-git contributions
> > will be visible in old versions of the pages (i.e., if one sees
> > Jane Random Developer in CREDITS and wonders which pages she contributed
> > to, they can `git log -S 'Jane Random Developer'` and similar commands
> > to find out.
> > 
> > Thanks!
> > 
> > 
> > Have a lovely night!
> > Alex
> > 
> > > 
> > > e.g.
> > > ~~~
> > > The glibc project stopped adding "Contributed by" lines to source files in 2012
> > > in favour of acknowledging contributors in the glibc manual and through the git
> > > log.  The record of existing "Contributed by" lines have now been moved to this
> > > file to acknowledge contributions by these developers to glibc.
> > > 
> > > argp/argp-test.c:
> > >     Written by Miles Bader <miles@gnu.ai.mit.edu>.
> > > 
> > > argp/tst-argp1.c:
> > >     Contributed by Ulrich Drepper <drepper@redhat.com>, 2002.
> > > ...
> > > ~~~
> > > The top-level CONTRIBUTED-BY has ~3,000 Contributed/Written by lines.
> > > 
> > > Sme of the authors predated the use of git and so it was simpler to keep the
> > > lines somewhere as part of the transition away from "Contributed by"-style
> > > lines.
> > > 
> > > -- 
> > > Cheers,
> > > Carlos.
> > > 
> > > 
> > 
> > -- 
> > <https://www.alejandro-colomar.es/>
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> <https://www.alejandro-colomar.es/>