From owner-freebsd-ports  Sat Aug 24 03:14:51 1996
Return-Path: owner-ports
Received: (from root@localhost)
          by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id DAA25338
          for ports-outgoing; Sat, 24 Aug 1996 03:14:51 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from dfw-ix9.ix.netcom.com (dfw-ix9.ix.netcom.com [206.214.98.9])
          by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id DAA25333
          for <ports@freebsd.org>; Sat, 24 Aug 1996 03:14:48 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from baloon.mimi.com (sjx-ca65-29.ix.netcom.com [206.217.121.93]) by dfw-ix9.ix.netcom.com (8.6.13/8.6.12) with ESMTP id DAA02544; Sat, 24 Aug 1996 03:14:15 -0700
Received: (from asami@localhost) by baloon.mimi.com (8.7.5/8.6.12) id DAA03572; Sat, 24 Aug 1996 03:14:13 -0700 (PDT)
Date: Sat, 24 Aug 1996 03:14:13 -0700 (PDT)
Message-Id: <199608241014.DAA03572@baloon.mimi.com>
To: jkh@time.cdrom.com
CC: ports@freebsd.org
In-reply-to: <5094.840878548@time.cdrom.com> (jkh@time.cdrom.com)
Subject: Re: How to people feel about adding an AUTHOR convention to ports?
From: asami@freebsd.org (Satoshi Asami)
Sender: owner-ports@freebsd.org
X-Loop: FreeBSD.org
Precedence: bulk

 * That is, a variable defined in the Makefile which contains an author
 * string purely for 2 cosmetic reasons:
 * 
 * 1. You can easily see where it came from, as opposed to who's simply
 *    maintaining the FreeBSD port itself (which is all that MAINTAINER
 *    tells you).
 * 
 * 2. The author gets more prominent credit, not having their work "swallowed"
 *    so much by the ports mechanism that many become anonymous to those users
 *    who aren't motivated enough to go digging through the port's work
 *    directory.
 * 
 * I'm sure we could also use the extra information to dress up the web
 * pages a little bit.

You mean we put things like "AUTHOR=rms@gnu.ai.mit.edu" for emacs?

Hmm...well I don't know, it seems like just some extra work for the
porters for not really much gain.  If the authors wants 2, they would
have declared it themselves in the manpages.... :)

Besides, how exactly are you planning to use it?  The author can be a
group of people, just a name and snail mail address (no e-mail), a
company name, etc...so it's not like you can stick in a mailto: to
have it underlined like MAINTAINER.... ;)

Satoshi