(Victor) RE: cvs commit: xml-fop/src/documentation/content/xdocs team.xml

[Glen Mazza <gr...@yahoo.com>]

>>> Victor wrote:
>
>Jeremias wrote:
>> AFAIK Mark Lillywhite was never a committer, only a

>> contributor. He
>> helped improve speed and memory consumption back 
>> during his active times.
>> Unfortunately, he didn't stay long enough to get
>> nominated.

<snip>

>BTW, what triggered this was my transfer of the last
>batch of "resolved"
>style issues to the web page, which included a
>provision to remove personal
>attributions within source code. I want to make sure
>that we don't just
>erase the memory of the people at the same time.
>Victor Mote

Victor,

Rather than burden the team page with the name of each
person who has contributed source code to FOP, I think
it would be better for us to continue to keep their
names in the source file, albeit outside of the
@author attribute tag.

I had understood the vote as for us not using the
@author attribution for source files--in short, that
our FOP JavaDoc won't be listing individual committer
and contributor names.  That's a clean design for our
JavaDocs, which I agreed with. 

But even though the vote was probably to remove *all*
author comments, @author or not (which is also fine,
after all, the committers themselves rarely put their
names on any files), it was not "to remove all author
credits *and* add them to the team page."  

Indeed, I don't know of any other Apache group that
maintains a "former contributors" section instead of
comments in the source files--and I'm reluctant for us
to open that can of worms--especially as this will
soon grow to dozens of names (look at the AWT classes,
for example).

Simple non-JavaDoc comments near the top of a source
file that indicate its original contributor are not
that bad, actually the right thing to do.  (It's also
what jfor apparently does--see the Team section at:
http://www.jfor.org/)  In those cases where we're
concerned about the contributor's work getting
"erased", then this is probably the cleaner route.

Glen

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RE: (Victor) RE: cvs commit: xml-fop/src/documentation/content/xdocs team.xml

[Glen Mazza <gr...@yahoo.com>]

--- Victor Mote <vi...@outfitr.com> wrote:
> It also was not to "remove all author credits and
> make enhancements to the
> RTF Renderer", but we've done some of that, haven't
> we?

Sorry if I was implying we restore already removed
author attributes--we voted to do away with them, and
for any removed, they're now gone.  For *future*
source files, however, we may vote to allow them
again, especially if it helps bring in more
contributions.  I'm not going to bother with this
issue at this time, however--proper credit on the team
page is fine for now.

Also Mr. Lillywhite evidently did a lot of work for
the team, and may have been on FOP during a time it
was very difficult to become a committer (Jeremias had
to wait 18 months, for example; Peter over a year I
believe)-- a listing for him somewhere on the team
page was probably the right thing to do anyway.

> IMO, it would be
> *much* cleaner to use the @author tag than any other
> method within the
> source code. 

Oh, I didn't know hiding the author attribute was the
default, you're right then--the @author tags would be
much cleaner.  Thanks.

Glen

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RE: (Victor) RE: cvs commit: xml-fop/src/documentation/content/xdocs team.xml

[Victor Mote <vi...@outfitr.com>]

Glen Mazza wrote:

> Victor,
>
> Rather than burden the team page with the name of each
> person who has contributed source code to FOP, I think
> it would be better for us to continue to keep their
> names in the source file, albeit outside of the
> @author attribute tag.

I really hate to be arguing all of the time, but I don't see the "burden".
If we were paying for web space by the word, then maybe you have a point.
Otherwise, I don't think it is too much to acknowledge those who have
contributed to the product.

> I had understood the vote as for us not using the
> @author attribution for source files--in short, that
> our FOP JavaDoc won't be listing individual committer
> and contributor names.  That's a clean design for our
> JavaDocs, which I agreed with.
>
> But even though the vote was probably to remove *all*
> author comments, @author or not (which is also fine,
> after all, the committers themselves rarely put their
> names on any files), it was not "to remove all author
> credits *and* add them to the team page."

It also was not to "remove all author credits and make enhancements to the
RTF Renderer", but we've done some of that, haven't we? There are quite a
few things that don't require a vote. However, I interpret your comments
above to now be a proposal to remove such credits from the team page, which
can, of course, be voted on.

-1

> Indeed, I don't know of any other Apache group that
> maintains a "former contributors" section instead of
> comments in the source files--and I'm reluctant for us
> to open that can of worms--especially as this will
> soon grow to dozens of names (look at the AWT classes,
> for example).

I'm glad to acknowledge all of them, even if there are hundreds.

> Simple non-JavaDoc comments near the top of a source
> file that indicate its original contributor are not
> that bad, actually the right thing to do.  (It's also
> what jfor apparently does--see the Team section at:
> http://www.jfor.org/)  In those cases where we're
> concerned about the contributor's work getting
> "erased", then this is probably the cleaner route.

You may be correct about the intent, but I doubt it. The default for javadoc
is to ignore the @author tags. Therefore, I think that the intent was to not
clutter the source code with author attributions at all. IMO, it would be
*much* cleaner to use the @author tag than any other method within the
source code. However, none of this was really of much interest to me, so
perhaps those who really cared about it would comment.

Victor Mote