Credit and Free Software

Hans Reiser - you're thinking ReiserFS, and you'd be right - has a proposal to slather Free Software with credits for its authors. Good? Bad? This is something the community has generally moved away from, but maybe Reiser has a good point. Newsforge is part of OSDN.

Bad credit? No credit?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then the new GPL Secured Platinum Card from RMS is for you! All the credit you ever wanted, in one small piece of code.

This is a good idea.

[Meat Blaster]

For many who contribute, the only compensation they see is in recognition. Everybody knows who Linux is, but how about the guy that put sed together?

I would like to propose that, in addition to the mandatory screensaver displaying the credits, that every fifth time you run a utility its name, version number, date of creation, and author are read through the speaker. This way, people can truly appreciate the donation of software by others. To celebrate Free Software's global approach towards solving problems, this should be subtitled on the screen in the user's native language. This way, we can truly feel the joy of helping people without compensation while being compensated for it.

Credit

[Anonymous Coward]

Post continued below following legal credits...

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This post copyright 2003 by http://slashdot.org/~anonymous-coward

All rights reserved.

Typing done by anonymous coward

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Re:This is a good idea.

[joshtimmons]

Or, better yet, every fifth time you run a utility it should quiz you for the author's name. If you don't know the answer, then it refuses to run.

That will get people to learn author's names.

Ho-Ho Man!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen your work in Legend of Zelda: the Wind Waker, sir, and I have to tell you, I'm impressed.

Get your dick outta the peanut butter, cause you're fuckin' nuts!

I don't need credit

[Anonymous Coward]

Only the insecure and hardup feel the need to take credit. Look, I'm gifting the world with this post, and by remaining anonymous, I'm not even taking credit for it.

Re:Credit

[Anonymous Coward]

>now what was I going to say again?

"First post", I think... ;-)

Re:Give 'em the shaft

[Herr_Nightingale]

if authors deserve to have credits all over the free software that they created, then why stop there? Let's have popup ads on websites to give the sponsors their fair due! Let's have status bar scrollers in OpenOffice listing credits, and banners when the program is minimized - just in case using it wasn't annoying enough already.
Take it a step further, and actually read Reiser's article.. here's my favourite part. With this little gem, Hans reveals that he is totally, unequivocally out to lunch. The rest of the article is nearly as bad..

This is why distros drop the K from all the KDE programs: somebody else is trying to establish a brand name, and that is a market threat they want to cut off.

Yeah Hans, it's not because the K is farking stupid or makes free software look like childish Krap; it's Klearly a Konspiracy!
Users don't care, Hans. I skip channels, block popups, and kill adware faster than you can say "fuck the users." I suspect that many of the 0.3% of computer owners who use Linux full-time feel the same way.

I guess that's all I've got to say on the matter.

Re:Points not to be discounted lightly

[hughk]

I remember those BSD-style credits. It took ages for the system to display them all during boot. If someone wants to build a 'click-here for developer credits' into an app then its fine by me. What I don't want is involuntary scrolling credits, particularly on app startup. If this leaked into the kernel, we would be in dead trouble - wait three days for a boot!!!!

Interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as it's not popup windows. Heh.

What next?

[Anonymous Coward]

GNU/Reiser/Linux ??

Re:2 points

[autopr0n]

ESR, in it, discusses how ego boosting is by nature frowned upon

Wow, now THATS ironic!!