On Jan 8, 2004, at 3:16 PM, Mike Kienenberger wrote:
> Interesting thread on..uthor tags in community projects.
>
> http://tinyurl.com/yrlhu
>
> I included a couple of the more interesting snippets below, but left
> out
> some of the legal arguments.
Yeah, this discussions do pop up every once in a while, kind of like
GPL vs. BSD license flamewars - there is no "right" or "wrong". There
are three main concerns about..uthor tag in that thread: someone
getting more credit than he deserves; a false perception of ownership
of a piece of code; unneeded exposure of developers to the potential
legal liability.
As for giving extra credit, I totally agree that..uthor tag is
imperfect. But unlike some of the posters, I don't think that it makes
it evil somehow, and personally I don't care much about it either way.
I guess Jakarta folks had some real bad situations, something we
haven't experienced (yet?) in Cayenne. There is no good way to quantify
someone's contribution to the project, and this is not the problem with
the..uthor tag. This is just the nature of open source - most
contributors would send a single patch, and disappear forever, some
others would make significant contributions an extended period of time,
but then switch to .NET, etc. :-)
Code ownership... This hasn't been an issue in Cayenne yet, though I
can see how it can potentially become one... Again, I think the problem
here is better communication between the people involved, not some
arbitrary comments in the code.
Legal Issues... Unlike Apache, ObjectStyle.org doesn't provide blanket
legal protection for the contributors (or any legal protection
whatsoever). There is no "ObjectStyle Foundation" as a legal entity, so
there is no legal reason to avoid..uthor either.
On a side note, since we are growing as a community, I am in favor of
organizing ObjectStyle into a non-profit organization for developers
and run by developers, similar to Apache Foundation. This would have
great benefits, but I don't think it is realistic at this moment
without some corporate/edu/other sponsorship. If anyone on this list
has contacts with organizations that might be interested in helping
such a community to grow..... drop us a note... Currently
ObjectStyle.org exists due to contributions from myself and my
consulting company. We can afford hosting, sysadmin services, but not
the legal fees and such.
Andrus
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