Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2000 10:40:06 +0000 From: Brian Somers <brian@Awfulhak.org> To: Brian Fundakowski Feldman <green@FreeBSD.org> Cc: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>, Garrett Wollman <wollman@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu>, Dag-Erling Smorgrav <des@flood.ping.uio.no>, Philippe Charnier <charnier@FreeBSD.org>, cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org, cvs-all@FreeBSD.org, brian@hak.lan.Awfulhak.org Subject: Re: cvs commit: src/usr.sbin/inetd inetd.8 inetd.c Message-ID: <200001291040.KAA02052@hak.lan.Awfulhak.org> In-Reply-To: Message from Brian Fundakowski Feldman <green@FreeBSD.org> of "Sat, 29 Jan 2000 02:35:02 EST." <Pine.BSF.4.21.0001290225080.18581-100000@green.dyndns.org>
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> On Sat, 29 Jan 2000, Greg Lehey wrote:
>
> > On Friday, 28 January 2000 at 12:12:54 -0500, Garrett Wollman wrote:
> > > <<On 28 Jan 2000 13:23:54 +0100, Dag-Erling Smorgrav <des@flood.ping.uio.no> said:
> > >
> > >> I seem to recall claiming maintainership of inetd...
> > >
> > > That does not give you the right to impede the work of the
> > > documentation project.
> >
> > That was never the purpose of being MAINTAINER.
>
> As being a maintainer of code which I only wrote a very small bit of, but
> am very familiar with, dd(1), I put MAINTAINER in the Makefile to signify
> this. I want to show people that
> 1. I know what this code does
> 2. I know what this code should do
> 3. if there are disputes about it, or problems with it, you
> can come to me
> and
> 4. Since I have a very good understanding of all of this, I would
> appreciate if you let me review anything you plan to do to it.
>
> I see being maintainer as an issue of who should be messing with this code
> _since_ they're people who have messed with this code a lot, and know this
> code well. In fact, it's a very good thing to have MAINTAINER in case
> you (for example) don't know the right person that you would want to
> contact directly for things which regard whatever it is.
>
> I really don't think it's fair to impede others with an undue delay, so
> if this happens and someone makes a commit without the maintainer's
> specific permission, the maintainer should really not make a big fuss
> unless it is a huge mistake. I don't like the fact that being
> maintainer of something is seen as a big threatening gesture from some
> people or to some people, and really don't think it should be carried
> as such.
Absolutely !
> Once again, I've been too verbose. Sorry :)
Well, I agree - violently ! I'm happy to have people update ppp(8)
with new thought-out features, and if I had a problem with the
change would behave in exactly the same way as if I didn't have the
MAINTAINER line.
The MAINTAINER line is, as you say, an easy way for people to make a
judgement about how to proceed in making changes. It's also tells
people who don't want to wade through cvs logs who to blame for any
breakages and who to ask ``is this really supposed to do this ?''.
It also tells PR-watchers who to assign PRs to. In fact, it's a
liability.
It *doesn't* give me the right to *own* the code. If I wanted to
*own* it, I wouldn't put the same license at the top of it.
It certainly doesn't give me the right to flame people about making
modifications. If the modifications break things or are clearly
wrong, this has nothing to do with MAINTAINER=.
> > Greg
> > --
> > Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key
> > See complete headers for address and phone numbers
>
> --
> Brian Fundakowski Feldman \ FreeBSD: The Power to Serve! /
> green@FreeBSD.org `------------------------------'
--
Brian <brian@Awfulhak.org> <brian@FreeBSD.org>
<http://www.Awfulhak.org>; <brian@OpenBSD.org>
Don't _EVER_ lose your sense of humour ! <brian@FreeBSD.org.uk>
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