How to give proper attributions to patches?

[Pedro Giffuni <pf...@apache.org>]

Hello;

After closing a bugzilla issue I received a very well
presented and reasonable request: 
______

Thanks Pedro for pushing the patch.
I'm glad that this long time issue was solved. Soon I would
like to contribute more patches to OpenOffice.

I spend a lot of hours to fix this issue.

Could you please add my name to the list of contributor?
______

This is the type of contributors we need, and it's the
kind of people I would like to motivate to sign an iCLA
and eventually become an Apache committer.

Perhaps we should establish some policy concerning
the list of contributors (where is it, BTW?); no
idea if we want to distinguish between recent (AOO)
contributors and previous (OOo) contributors.

Pedro.

Re: How to give proper attributions to patches?

[Pedro Giffuni <pf...@apache.org>]

--- Mer 15/2/12, Rob Weir <ro...@apache.org> ha scritto:
...
> >
> > Perhaps we should establish some policy concerning
> > the list of contributors (where is it, BTW?); no
> > idea if we want to distinguish between recent (AOO)
> > contributors and previous (OOo) contributors.
> >
> 
> I think this is at two levels:
> 
> 1) Give credit in the commit memo when committing the patch
> 

Yes, this is key.

> 2) Add to credits list here:  http://www.openoffice.org/welcome/credits.html
> 
> That page is what we point to from the about box, I believe.
> It is very out-of-date.  It does not include you or me.
> 

I see .. I personally don't care but a lot of people do and
it can become a good motivation. In certain other project
we have some level: you start by being an "additional code
cpntributor" and when you become a committer you are
jumped to a "developer" level.



> In any case, if we get the SVN side correct, and do it in a
> consistent way, then we can easily extract a list of patch
> submitters to add to the credits page before each release.
> For example:  "Fixed overflow error in smallBuffer (patch
> from Joe Bloggs)".
>

That's something we are getting wrong (and I include myself
here). Instead of the lazy one line comments we should be
using a template; something like this, in a text file:

___

Clean buffer overflows when initializing .doc files.

As shown in Wikileaks a bogusly created .doc file can
embed a trojan that will capture all your data if your
password is 12345.

Contributed by:  The Anonymous Group
BZ Issue :       666
MFC after:       3 weeks.
_____

In my other pet project the bug reporting system is
notified and I receive mail after 3 weeks reminding me
to merge changes from the current branch.

Bug reports are usually taken into account when electing
new committers.

 
> But what about other areas, like forum volunteers, people
> submitting bugs, people helping on ooo-users, people
> designing logos, etc. ?
> 

doc committers should receive similar recognition. Some
other contributions are difficult to quantify and are
usually incorrectly quantified. We cannot be perfect but
we can try to do better.
  
> Of course, another approach is to not have a credits
> page. 

I think we should have one but it should be opt-in.

In any case I do think we should break apart the
contributors from the old OpenOffice.org and the
active ones in Apache.

...

> 
> A third approach would be to let those who care add their
> own name.
> So instead of a web page for credits, move that to the wiki,
> and invite contributors to add their own info. We sort of do
> that already, with the "people" page, but that is not as easy
> to edit as the wiki.
> 

Maybe this would be useful so that people describe what they
would like to work on, but this is something that would
likely run out of control very easily.

Pedro.

Re: How to give proper attributions to patches?

[Rob Weir <ro...@apache.org>]

On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 4:44 PM, Pedro Giffuni <pf...@apache.org> wrote:
> Hello;
>
> After closing a bugzilla issue I received a very well
> presented and reasonable request:
> ______
>
> Thanks Pedro for pushing the patch.
> I'm glad that this long time issue was solved. Soon I would
> like to contribute more patches to OpenOffice.
>
> I spend a lot of hours to fix this issue.
>
> Could you please add my name to the list of contributor?
> ______
>
> This is the type of contributors we need, and it's the
> kind of people I would like to motivate to sign an iCLA
> and eventually become an Apache committer.
>
> Perhaps we should establish some policy concerning
> the list of contributors (where is it, BTW?); no
> idea if we want to distinguish between recent (AOO)
> contributors and previous (OOo) contributors.
>

I think this is at two levels:

1) Give credit in the commit memo when committing the patch

2) Add to credits list here:  http://www.openoffice.org/welcome/credits.html

That page is what we point to from the about box, I believe. It is
very out-of-date.  It does not include you or me.

In any case, if we get the SVN side correct, and do it in a consistent
way, then we can easily extract a list of patch submitters to add to
the credits page before each release.   For example:  "Fixed overflow
error in smallBuffer (patch from Joe Bloggs)".

But what about other areas, like forum volunteers, people submitting
bugs, people helping on ooo-users, people designing logos, etc. ?

Of course, another approach is to not have a credits page.  That takes
us out of the "arms race" to see which project can come up with the
largest number of minor contributors.  Going down that path eventually
leads to you crediting the authors of every module that AOO depends
on, including build tools and compilers.  At some point you bottom out
by listing Alan Turing.

A third approach would be to let those who care add their own name.
So instead of a web page for credits, move that to the wiki, and
invite contributors to add their own info. We sort of do that already,
with the "people" page, but that is not as easy to edit as the wiki.

-Rob


> Pedro.
>

Re: How to give proper attributions to patches?

[Yuri Dario <mc...@mclink.it>]

Hi,


> Perhaps we should establish some policy concerning
> the list of contributors (where is it, BTW?); no
> idea if we want to distinguish between recent (AOO)
> contributors and previous (OOo) contributors.

it is in the source code: menu help, about box. Press Ctrl+S, Ctrl+D, 
Ctlr+T



-- 
Bye,

	Yuri Dario

/*
 * OS/2 open source software
 * http://web.os2power.com/yuri
 * http://www.netlabs.org
*/

Re: How to give proper attributions to patches?

[Shane Curcuru <as...@shanecurcuru.org>]

On 2012-02-15 4:44 PM, Pedro Giffuni wrote:
...
> Perhaps we should establish some policy concerning
> the list of contributors (where is it, BTW?); no
> idea if we want to distinguish between recent (AOO)
> contributors and previous (OOo) contributors.
...

Excellent discussion.  I'd suggest PPMC members look at the 
well-established and (incredibly) detailed commit log message standards 
our own Apache Subversion project uses:

 
http://subversion.apache.org/docs/community-guide/conventions.html#crediting

It might be useful if a couple of folks review those guidelines, pick a 
couple that seem pertinent, and propose them for this project to adopt. 
  As you might expect, as a project that builds a source code tracker, 
the Subversion project is pretty detailed about how they track commit 
logs. 8-)

In general, providing credit like this in a simple way that's visible to 
the active developers on the project (wherever that is) is definitely 
important.  There are both some contributors who simply like to get the 
credit; it also allows the existing committers to clearly see what new 
contributors are doing over time, allowing the community to better see 
who to consider for future committer votes.

Note: in general, giving credit is a good thing, especially to new 
submitters.  Making people "owners" or "leaders" of specific modules in 
the larger sense is... not necessarily a good thing; in terms of 
ownership, we encourage the community as a whole to own the project.

- shane