From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S2992995AbXDDQkI (ORCPT ); Wed, 4 Apr 2007 12:40:08 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S2992988AbXDDQkI (ORCPT ); Wed, 4 Apr 2007 12:40:08 -0400 Received: from smtpq1.groni1.gr.home.nl ([213.51.130.200]:43683 "EHLO smtpq1.groni1.gr.home.nl" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S2992996AbXDDQkG (ORCPT ); Wed, 4 Apr 2007 12:40:06 -0400 Message-ID: <4613D492.2070404@gmail.com> Date: Wed, 04 Apr 2007 18:38:42 +0200 From: Rene Herman User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.10 (X11/20070221) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Alan Cox CC: Adrian Bunk , Marcel Holtmann , Christoph Hellwig , Rusty Russell , Linux Kernel Subject: Re: MODULE_MAINTAINER References: <46138B4C.2050409@gmail.com> <20070404123311.GA18552@infradead.org> <1175698135.5815.447.camel@violet> <20070404150231.GE27660@stusta.de> <4613C963.6070409@gmail.com> <20070404170016.453d26f1@the-village.bc.nu> In-Reply-To: <20070404170016.453d26f1@the-village.bc.nu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-15; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-AtHome-MailScanner-Information: Please contact support@home.nl for more information X-AtHome-MailScanner: Found to be clean Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On 04/04/2007 06:00 PM, Alan Cox wrote: >> Given that people seem to agree that authorship information has no place >> in the binary, that might actually be best. > > Authorship information is very useful in the binary, especially when you > have to get lawyers involved in explaining things to people. Okay. >> So, MODULE_AUTHOR be gone? > > Not if I have anything to do with it. Putting maintainer in is not a > bad idea but that assumes it gets maintained, the beauty of _AUTHOR > is that it's generally right and stays that way or approximately so. Case in point; someone is working with me in private on a new "mitsumi" legacy CD-ROM driver. He's authoring the actual driver and upto now I've just been doing some peripheral module infrastructure work. Given that I have the hardware to test the thing, I'll be the maintainer though. Adding myself as a MODULE_AUTHOR would be largely incorrect and adding myself as the _only_ MODULE_AUTHOR would be so factually incorrect I wouldn't, even if only from a credits point of view. Yet I do want to make sure people contact me, and not the MODULE_AUTHOR (which will happen no matter the MAINTAINERS file). Other cases-in-point; I've lately been rummaging through sound/isa a bit. Nothing much copyrightable again but especially in those situations where (some of the) original authors are no longer active, I do again want people to contact me about them if needed. And all the "which one of the three people listed here is maintaining this" is yet another. MODULE_AUTHOR may be approximately right but especially with old drivers it also has little relation with who's maintaining the thing. If MODULE_AUTHOR stays, can I just have MODULE_MAINTAINER please? It doesn't need to be added to drivers directly, it can just grow (and being inside the code, I suppose it'll likely stay up to date better than the MAINTAINERS file). Rene.