On 05/10/2012 11:32 AM, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> On Thu, May 10, 2012 at 11:26:14AM -0400, Robert Haas wrote:
>> There are some cases, like index-only scans, where I think it would be
>> very hard to get down to one name, because four different people wrote
>> code that ended up being part of that. Now you could probably get it
>> down to just two by cutting Heikki (who isn't listed) and Ibrar (who
>> is) but saying that only one of Tom and I did that feature would be
>> quite misleading regardless of who you picked. Similarly, there are a
>> couple of patches that I worked on with Simon where crediting only one
>> of us would be wrong, regardless of which one you picked, and I think
>> there are other cases of this involving other people as well. So I
>> think a hard and fast rule of crediting exactly one person is not
>> going to work, but limiting it to the primary author or authors is
>> feasible.
>>
>> Honestly, I'm leaning more and more toward the view that we should
>> just rip the names out entirely. I mean, look at something like
>> sortsupport. That would never have gotten done without Peter
>> Geoghegan's work on it, but the code *as committed* was half mine and
>> half Tom's. So what are you going to do with that? It's weird to
>> credit Peter and not Tom or I, and it's weird to credit Tom or I and
>> not Peter, and it's even weird of you credit all three of us because
>> any decision about who to put first is arguable and maybe wrong. The
>> simplest solution to my mind is to credit no one, which at least has
>> the advantage of being unarguably uniform.
> Keep in mind that the reason I originally had names in the release notes
> was so I could remember who to email when something broke. That really
> isn't the case anymore.
>
> I agree that making these names give _credit_ is never going to work.
> Robert's example above is very clear on that.
>
> We could try cutting it down to one name and see if we have any problems
> with it. Robert is right that if you are thinking of this as "credit"
> it is never going to work.
>
I don't really buy this at all. The fact that it's not perfect doesn't
mean that it's wrong. Just about the only reward we give contributors is
some kudos, and the more the better as far as I'm concerned. I'd almost
like to see a "Credits" section of the release notes, but if we're not
going to have that let's keep doing what we have been doing.
cheers
andrew
