Date: Thu, 4 May 2000 03:04:30 +0100 From: Nik Clayton <nik@freebsd.org> To: Sean Kelly <kelly@ad1440.net> Cc: doc@FreeBSD.ORG, jim@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Credit where it's due Message-ID: <20000504030430.A21461@catkin.nothing-going-on.org> In-Reply-To: <000001bfb49e$f2a33d40$24d39580@jpl.nasa.gov>; from kelly@ad1440.net on Tue, May 02, 2000 at 04:36:41PM -0700 References: <000001bfb49e$f2a33d40$24d39580@jpl.nasa.gov>
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[ *not* speaking with the Manager's hat on ]
On Tue, May 02, 2000 at 04:36:41PM -0700, Sean Kelly wrote:
> So, I want to know: is this the new policy for documentation submitted to
> the FreeBSD project? Whoever last edits it gets complete credit?
I think it's policy not to have a policy. It's not really come up before.
> If it isn't the new policy, then what is? Should we say there's an
> implicit BSD license applied to material submitted? For example, do we
> want adomonitions such as "This documentation contains text written by Joe
> Blow" appearing in our preface?
Not sure.
To give you an analogy, one of the things that really throws me everytime
I see a Linux box booting up is the various copyrights as the boot probes
go by. I'd never expect to see a
[...]
fxp0: <Intel EtherExpress Pro 10/100B Ethernet> rev 0x05 int a irq 10
fxp0: Driver written by David Greenman <dg@FreeBSD.org>
[...]
in FreeBSD.
I kind of feel the same way about the Handbook -- it's why there's no
explicit credit for me in makeworld.html (although, oddly enough, there is
one in the PPP chapter for some reason).
Having said that, I can completely see your point about public credit being
a good and useful thing.
On the third hand, I don't want a situation whereby there's a honking big
piece of text at the front of every chapter listing everyone who's ever
submitted a patch to it.
On the fourth hand, nor do I particularly want the job of deciding whether
someone's contribution is ``significant'' enough for a credit in the
documentation (as opposed to the CVS logs). That way lies madness.
Perhaps a workable solution would be an "acknowledgements" block at the
start of the Handbook (and/or FAQ), something like:
The FreeBSD Documentation Project would like to acknowledge the work
of the following individuals.
* John Fieber, Documentation Project Manager, 1995-98
* Jun Kuriyama, principle liason, Japanese translation team
* Sean Kelly, author of much of the material in the _Printing_
chapter
and so on, and so forth, with no ``in chapter'' credits.
Thoughts?
N
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