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Posted to dev@tomcat.apache.org by Mark Thomas <ma...@apache.org> on 2025/09/29 09:55:29 UTC
Removal of all @author tags (and similar)
All,
With the recent changes there are ~520 author tags and similar in the
12.0.x code base. As far as I can see, none are for currently active
Tomcat committers.
Given that the general ASF view is that author tags and similar are not
a good idea (they promote the idea of individuals owning or being
responsible for overseeing parts of the code base) what do folks think
about removing them entirely?
I would be happy to do this work.
My plan would be to do one commit per author so that a) the author's
name appears in the (much more recent) git commit log and b) we have a
relatively easy route to revert a removal if we wanted to.
I will note that there is no legal nor technical requirement to maintain
author tags. Their addition was an entirely social convention as was the
decision to stop using them (I think around the time I joined the project).
Thoughts?
Mark
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Re: Removal of all @author tags (and similar)
Posted by Coty Sutherland <cs...@apache.org>.
On Mon, Sep 29, 2025 at 5:56 AM Mark Thomas <ma...@apache.org> wrote:
> All,
>
> With the recent changes there are ~520 author tags and similar in the
> 12.0.x code base. As far as I can see, none are for currently active
> Tomcat committers.
>
> Given that the general ASF view is that author tags and similar are not
> a good idea (they promote the idea of individuals owning or being
> responsible for overseeing parts of the code base) what do folks think
> about removing them entirely?
>
> I would be happy to do this work.
>
> My plan would be to do one commit per author so that a) the author's
> name appears in the (much more recent) git commit log and b) we have a
> relatively easy route to revert a removal if we wanted to.
>
> I will note that there is no legal nor technical requirement to maintain
> author tags. Their addition was an entirely social convention as was the
> decision to stop using them (I think around the time I joined the project).
>
> Thoughts?
>
+1
Re: Removal of all @author tags (and similar)
Posted by Rainer Jung <ra...@kippdata.de>.
Am 29.09.25 um 11:55 schrieb Mark Thomas:
> All,
>
> With the recent changes there are ~520 author tags and similar in the
> 12.0.x code base. As far as I can see, none are for currently active
> Tomcat committers.
>
> Given that the general ASF view is that author tags and similar are not
> a good idea (they promote the idea of individuals owning or being
> responsible for overseeing parts of the code base) what do folks think
> about removing them entirely?
>
> I would be happy to do this work.
>
> My plan would be to do one commit per author so that a) the author's
> name appears in the (much more recent) git commit log and b) we have a
> relatively easy route to revert a removal if we wanted to.
>
> I will note that there is no legal nor technical requirement to maintain
> author tags. Their addition was an entirely social convention as was the
> decision to stop using them (I think around the time I joined the project).
>
> Thoughts?
+1
There are also quite a few author notes in tomcat-connectors and very
few in tomcat-native. I am happy to remove the ones pointing to me from
tomcat-connectors (and also applies Mark's general plan to
tomcat-connectors, it the project agrees to it).
Best regards,
Rainer
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Re: Removal of all @author tags (and similar)
Posted by Christopher Schultz <ch...@christopherschultz.net>.
Mark,
On 9/29/25 5:55 AM, Mark Thomas wrote:
> All,
>
> With the recent changes there are ~520 author tags and similar in the
> 12.0.x code base. As far as I can see, none are for currently active
> Tomcat committers.
>
> Given that the general ASF view is that author tags and similar are not
> a good idea (they promote the idea of individuals owning or being
> responsible for overseeing parts of the code base) what do folks think
> about removing them entirely?
>
> I would be happy to do this work.
>
> My plan would be to do one commit per author so that a) the author's
> name appears in the (much more recent) git commit log and b) we have a
> relatively easy route to revert a removal if we wanted to.
>
> I will note that there is no legal nor technical requirement to maintain
> author tags. Their addition was an entirely social convention as was the
> decision to stop using them (I think around the time I joined the project).
>
> Thoughts?
+1 for removal
I suggested this some years ago and it was argued at the time that it
would be nominally disrespectful to remove those authors, while I kind
of considered it nominally disrespectful that we weren't supposed to add
references to new authors.
-chris
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