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Date:      Mon, 27 Aug 2012 09:16:54 -0400
From:      Eitan Adler <lists@eitanadler.com>
To:        "Julian H. Stacey" <jhs@berklix.com>
Cc:        Brooks Davis <brooks@freebsd.org>, freebsd-ports@freebsd.org, Doug Barton <dougb@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: Can we please just remove the old Makefile headers?
Message-ID:  <CAF6rxgkL4BS9q-BApVz8vj5=DG84xEdF=yQGESTv=s2JL_PPpg@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <201208271240.q7RCeRP2023075@fire.js.berklix.net>
References:  <20120826221228.GD58745@lor.one-eyed-alien.net> <201208271240.q7RCeRP2023075@fire.js.berklix.net>

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On 27 August 2012 08:40, Julian H. Stacey <jhs@berklix.com> wrote:
>   On various other older ports, when I couldnt get response in time
>   from MAINTAINER (I don't mean re hylafax), perhaps maintainer on
>   holiday, & I couldn't wait for send-pr tiem out, & didnt want to
>   invoke send-pr, I fell back succesfully, to contacting the Whom:
>   creator, who while no longer regularly motivated to do maintenance,
>   could respond without delay & give hints (fallback maintainer).

Which is exactly the reason we should get rid of the whom lines. The
submitter is *not* a fallback maintainer, and some users mistakenly
assume that the whom line is the maintainer. We should be encouraging
users to mail ports@freebsd.org and possibly cc the maintainer if
required.

>   Some ports are easy to create, eg my lang/pbasic, but some are
>   hard, (eg I'd guess editors/openoffice-3 may have been, One might ask
>         # Whom:                 Martin Blapp

The whom address might be bouncing, the person might be not be using
FreeBSD anymore, or any of the like.

>   Let ports creators retain their one line of credit.  Removing it
>   would save little & be ungrateful, like removing names out of .c
>   & .h.  (Some (inc. me) may like noticing in passing who created
>   the ports one's working on)).  The credit may encourage some ports
>   creators to struggle on, creating sometimes obdurate complex ports
>   one might otherwise be tempted to give up on after a not-yet-port
>   is just hand built & hand tested localy,

Interesting argument. But this implies that we should allow the whom
line to be changed by "creator request"


-- 
Eitan Adler



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