[Bf-committers] Visibility of attribution

[Alex Fraser]

Hi all,

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Ton Roosendaal" <ton at blender.org>
> Subject: Re: [Bf-committers] Guidelines for developer logs, docs & blogs
> Hi,
> 
> Our bug tracker should facilitate that better I guess... I've seen the
> Linux patch system to add a disclaimer (you hereby confirm the code is
> yours or OK to submit) and a license/copyright note.

It's great that there has been progress on the contributor agreements. I like the idea of the simple disclaimer.

Please forgive me for bringing up the topic of attribution again. I would like to add a "Credits" link to the splash screen, like this:

    http://www.pasteall.org/pic/17174

It would link to a page like this one:

    http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/Source_code/Contributors

which would list all contributors for the life of the project. This is different to the current "Release Log" link, because
 1. Credits won't become invisible after the next release.
 2. It's much easier to find the credits page.

For now it might be easiest to add all the 2.5x credits pages to the page mentioned above. But as suggested by Campbell, we could move to a more scalable format that shows each developer and the number of commits they have made, like this:

    http://www.libreoffice.org/about-us/credits/

Even though many patches are committed by a developer on behalf of someone else, it might be possible to get most of the information by processing the SVN log.

What do you think?

Cheers,
Alex

> On 21 Jun, 2011, at 4:52, Alex Fraser wrote:
> 
> > Hi all,
> >
> > When doing some work for a client recently, I developed a patch for
> > Blender. The client is happy to contribute the code back to Blender,
> > however they are concerned about attribution.
> >
> > Currently it seems there are no clear guidelines about how
> > attribution is given for contributions. My preference, and that of
> > my client, is that detailed copyright notices should be visible both
> > in the code and in Blender's GUI. This is not unusual: consider the
> > Linux kernel (e.g. [1]) and the GIMP (e.g. [2-4]), and the About
> > dialog boxes of gedit[5] and Firefox[6].
> >
> > Apart from giving contributors credit, detailed copyright notices in
> > the code would better satisfy the GPL, which states in section 2.a:
> >
> >    a) You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices
> >    stating that you changed the files and the date of any change.
> >
> >
> > I propose that:
> >
> > 1. All future contributions be attributed in modified source files
> > as "Copyright <year> <author or organistion>", or at the
> > contributor's option, in another form that conveys the same
> > information.
> >
> > 2. The same copyright information be collected in a place accessible
> > from the GUI, either in the splash screen itself (perhaps in a tab)
> > or on a web page linked to from the splash screen.
> >
> > What do you think?
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Alex
> >
> > --
> > Alex Fraser
> > Software Engineer
> > The Victorian Partnership for Advanced Computing
> >
> > [1]
> > http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=blob_plain;f=kernel/cgroup.c
> > [2]
> > http://git.gnome.org/browse/gimp/plain/plug-ins/common/polar-coords.c
> > [3] http://git.gnome.org/browse/gimp/tree/plug-ins/twain/twain.h
> > [4] http://git.gnome.org/browse/gimp/tree/libgimp/gimpitemcombobox.c
> > [5] http://www.pasteall.org/pic/13959
> > [6] http://www.pasteall.org/pic/13961
> > _______________________________________________
> > Bf-committers mailing list
> > Bf-committers at blender.org
> > http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers
> 
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