Credit and Free Software 213
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.
Re:the purpose of free software for many IS credit (Score:1, Interesting)
Give 'em credit! (Score:4, Interesting)
The way I see it, the authors deserve to have credits all over the free software that they made. And when you run free software, don't tell yourself that it's your right to take someone else's work and use it "just because." You have the right to use it because THEY gave you that right.
This sucks. (Score:5, Interesting)
Free software is not about egos, it is about keeping software free. Forcing something like this through licensing makes the software non-free. Want the credits? Look at the source code or the documentation!!!
Re:Give 'em credit! (Score:5, Interesting)
While that's true on it's face, I would counter that making the fruits of your labor available to others in the community is not an entirely selfless act.
Really, quality OSS projects are not the work of a single person. They're the result of wide-ranging teams who, thanks to the GPL, are able to apply many eyes, ideas and approaches. That's the whole strength of OSS.
Now, I do believe it's important to give credit to those who work hard, but I also believe it's futile to toss credits in the face of someone who doesn't give a toss (and not giving a toss is a right the GPL gives you, as well).
Good idea, but... (Score:2, Interesting)
And, you'd have balkanization on how it should be implemented. Boot messages? Splash screens? If users get annoyed with these, they'd want to turn them off, and someone would find a way to do so. If a user wants to know who wrote a piece of free software, many times this is not difficult to obtain.
I guess I just see it as being unenforcible and unnecessary.
For God’s sake, just get off the screen! (Score:2, Interesting)
"I propose that we as a community insist that all distros make the default screensaver be one that randomly displays a different detailed credit for one of the authors of Linux software every 60 seconds."
This will certainly be the doom for open source software, specially Linux. Would you, or any company use software that displayed beards and glasses every minute? Let me answer that for you: -For God's sake, I'll pay for It! just get off the screen!
I write code, that's it. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:OSS belongs to the community (Score:2, Interesting)
As an OSS developer myself I feel everyone is entitled to use a copy of my stuff for whatever they want. I don't feel they "own" the project though.
I mean a lot of work goes into something like a Distro [or the stuff in a Distro]. Just because you're smart enough to put a CD in and install a distro doesn't mean you're a significant contributor.
I'm all for tasteful plugging authors names.
Tom
Re:Haven't We Been Here Before (Score:3, Interesting)
Adobe Photoshop (Score:3, Interesting)
I think a good way to credit a large number of developers, is to make a splash screen with the bottom quarter scrolling the names of authors/contributors. The user would simply have to click to proceed. That's unobtrusive and might even generate some interest in the user - who might one day stop and read the whole list.
Or perhaps instead of requiring a click, have the splash screen time out after a few seconds, but put a button on it labeled "click here for the credits!" - again unobtrusive.
But that still doesn't take care of stuff that doesn't have a GUI - like ReiserFS.
Re:This sucks. (Score:1, Interesting)
Note to self: Never ever ever use ReiserFS.
For any reason.
Period.
"Most prominently displayed" clause (Score:2, Interesting)
Remember "MacPaint by Bill Atkinson"?. For years, that appeared at the top of every MacPaint window.
2 points (Score:5, Interesting)
One, I'm currently in the process of re-reading "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" by ESR. In it, he discusses how ego boosting is by nature frowned upon. I'm surprised that Hans has felt compelled to take this point up.
Two, as others have pointed out, there are plenty of ways for authors to get recognition in a project.
Bottom line: grow up Hans.
P.S. random "unknown" hackers
I'm not liking it (Score:2, Interesting)
IIRC, Linus didn't name the kernel Linux, but indended to use some other (quite lame) name. It was the guy hosting it on ftp that namned the directory Linux, and such it became.
While I agree that authors should have credit, I don't think there's any special need to enforce it. I know that a guy at LiTH wrote the file manager I ue (gnome-commander), I know RMS wrote Emacs, gcc and gdb. I know Larry Wall did Perl. Linus did Linux, along with Allan Cox and many many others. Miguel de Icaza has some important role in the GNOME project(?), and Emmet Plant and Monty are bosses over Xiph.
The point is, that it doesn't need to be forced for me to know who wrote some of the software. I really don't like the marketeers view of the Free Software "market". Even though I was happy to see my name in the changelog of gkrellmms when I submitted a patch, I sure wouldn't expect my name to end up on some screensaver one time out of 1.000.000.
That's all the ranting I had.
I support giving credits, but... (Score:2, Interesting)
I agree with Hans about the academic culture's value of giving credits. However, there are two points worth mentioning.
About Dialogue: This is another place where they have credits showing at least the name of the main authors and the current maintainer. For instance:
ZZZZ@quark:~$ chown --versionchown (fileutils) 4.1
Written by David MacKenzie.
Copyright (C) 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc. This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
Thank you.
GrimReality
2003-05-03 19:54:57 UTC (2003-05-03 15:54:57 EDT)
Pardon my stupidity.
(Score: -10x10^128, Pro-Free-Software)
Re:Points not to be discounted lightly (Score:3, Interesting)
I think at the root of this is the whole "GNU/Linux" vs "Linux" debate, as that is one of the most prominent cases of not giving credit where credit is due. When that issue was covered on "Revolution OS", Stallman made a very good argument that there are thousands of people contributing GNU software which supports the Linux kernel to make an OS distribution, but GNU gets no credit. Linus's truly brilliant, and well though out response: its mine, so i call it Linux.
Re:Points not to be discounted lightly (Score:3, Interesting)
People that don't read the source code arent the sort of people who are likely to rember names IMO. (Or care about names generaly for that matter)
No way. In the new world order where IP goes away, your reputation as a contributor to software will be your stock in trade. It will be the means by which you price your services to those that would consume them from projects to emplyers. It is absolutely critical that software is correctly attributed and that it should be easy and proiminant.
You see someone who takes attributed code and claims it as their own is committing fraud an ancient wrong that is straightforward to prosecute. The commercial damage to one so wronged is an intruiging question but once the value of reputation in this new order is understood then the value of such damage will be eaiser to understand, both in terms of the private actionable wrong but also the public policy issue in ensuring that work is attributed accurately and completely.