From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.3 required=5.0 tests=MAILING_LIST_MULTI, RCVD_IN_DNSWL_MED,RCVD_IN_MSPIKE_H3,RCVD_IN_MSPIKE_WL autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: (qmail 3199 invoked from network); 2 Nov 2020 01:31:05 -0000 Received: from mother.openwall.net (195.42.179.200) by inbox.vuxu.org with ESMTPUTF8; 2 Nov 2020 01:31:05 -0000 Received: (qmail 9999 invoked by uid 550); 2 Nov 2020 01:31:02 -0000 Mailing-List: contact musl-help@lists.openwall.com; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-ID: Reply-To: musl@lists.openwall.com Received: (qmail 9978 invoked from network); 2 Nov 2020 01:31:02 -0000 Date: Sun, 1 Nov 2020 20:30:50 -0500 From: Rich Felker To: musl@lists.openwall.com Message-ID: <20201102013049.GR534@brightrain.aerifal.cx> References: <20201102011630.GQ534@brightrain.aerifal.cx> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20201102011630.GQ534@brightrain.aerifal.cx> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) Subject: Re: [musl] Authorship/attribution and stalled patches On Sun, Nov 01, 2020 at 08:16:32PM -0500, Rich Felker wrote: > It came to my attention that there are a few patches in limbo where, > after some discussion, it seems I was waiting for an updated patch > from the contributor to apply, and it never appeared. I could and > should just make the changes myself (this would have been more > efficient to begin with), but I'm not sure what to do about > authorship/attribution in that situation, and it probably deserves > community input. > > A while back, I started trying to make better use of git commit > authorship to credit contributors, rather than just mentioning "patch > by X" or "based on patch/idea by X" in commit messages. However I > still don't have a clear feel for how this should work in the case > where the patch is modified before being applied. Are there > established norms for the degree to which a patch should be modified > while leaving the author intact, or should it just always be converted > to commit authorship by the person who makes the final changes, with > original author in the description? It's really a tradeoff between > potential misattribution of mistakes or changes the original author > might not like, and failure to credit, and I don't know where the > right balance is. A further special case of this is where the content of the diff is fine, but the commit message needs significant rewording to be acceptable (e.g. the original only explains a what rather than a why, or includes a why that's not the actual reason the patch is needed). For other cases mentioned in the quoted text above, the Co-authored-by: pseudo-header popularized by Github seems to be a reasonable solution. But I don't feel it's appropriate to relegate someone to a "co-author" when the entire diff (or even 99% of it) is by them and it's just the commit message that was rewritten. (Ideally, git's data model would have separate authorship for commit message and diff, and I don't think existing committer field in the model is interpreted that way.) Rich