Thanks (really!)

[w9ya@arrl.net]

Hey Zbig and the gang;

Sadly most of the smaller distros I pay attention to are doing the same
thing, i.e. it will be hard for you to find one that doesn't remove
contributors names. I do not pretend to understand why, as this is a
complete reversal from the policies that Linux and related software was
developed with in the early days.

Conversely the "first tier" distros like Mandriva and such ALL maintain a
contributors name for ALL contributions including changes related to
de-bugging. In fact they will *NOT* accept anything that is anonymous, nor
will they EVER strip such information.

I *think* I know what this all means, but I will leave it up to the reader
to form their own opinion.

For what it is worth, as some of the old-timers here know, my personal
decision is always to side with retaining information on who and where
changes and additions come from.

Good luck Zbig, and very best regards;

Bob Finch



>> Zbigniew Łuszpiński wrote:
>> > I mean author rights. If I explained it wrong - sorry. Lunar is
>> LGPLv2 licensed so modules and other pieces of digital work in it.
>>
>> One thing is arguably copyrightable: modules. Even though you write a
>> module yourself, there is no way you can claim copyright over it
>> directly. I'd love to give everyone credit but in all honesty it makes
>> no sense: your module is a derivative work of both the original
>> authors package (who wrote the INSTALL file which exacly describes the
>> way to build a package) and the lunar-linux package management code
>> (which is (C) by about a dozen people and licensed under the GPLv2).
>> Neither these two groups lose their copyright when you write a module.
>
> If INSTALL file and lunar-linux package are so intelligent and do
> everything  why I should make DETAILS, DEPENDS, BUILD etc. files? Why
> these packages do  not download files from Internet? Many things must be
> written in these above  files to make the lunar and INSTALL script
> working. Without module  information these scripts are useless.
>
> Lets compare this situation to artist. You provide paint (lunar tools)
> someone  else on the Internet provides canvas (tar.gzipped programm) and
> artist  (contributor) use these things to create picture (module).
>
> Using your arguments to this situation: the picture do not belong to
> artist.  However the artist made the picture it do not belong to him
> because we  provided paint and other people provided canvas. Making
> paint and canvas is  more complicated than painting picture so artist
> does not matter.
>
> This picture was not painted by Van Gogh. This picture was made by
> united  colours inc. and super canvas corp.
>
>> Now, this has nothing to do with giving tribute to the contributors
>> who wrote all these fine modules. But that is a completely different
>> issue. Please keep these two issues separate as they upset the
>> discussion.
>>
>> Now, I am all for giving more credit to contributors, but like always
>> don't see a good way of doing this and keeping it up2date.
>
> A web page with 2 columns: module name, name of maintainer and his/her
> e-mail  for people who see old module but do not know how to use lvu.
> E-mail address should be little modified to avoid stealing by spamers.
> The  maintainer line in module should contain current address of
> maintainer. The  author line and previous maintainers should be included
> as kind of credits in  other line prevoius_contributors.
>
>> the MAINTAINER
>> field was specifically meant for active developers (not contributors),
>> which is why we usually strip out the (contributors) email address.
>> This puts some extra burden on developers,
>
> If lunar development team is so huge and do not need help of
> contributors  (striping useless things like contact data) I'm sorry I
> didn't know. It looks  lunar developers have large amounts of free time
> which need filling by making  modules.
>
>>but pays off a bit since people
>> will actually mail to the mailinglist instead of to someone who might
>> not have time or has disappeared off the face of the earth. This helps
>> and has helped in the past.
>
> AFAIK the developers always do not have time. In May I sent 7 modules,
> all  working (checked 3 times before sending). 2 of them was included in
> moonbase  the rest stuck in queue. Many modules in moonbase is very old,
> very small  part of them are being updated often. I believe contributors
> supervised by  developers would better take care moonbase. The newbie
> contributors tutored  and checked always by developers will become soon
> power contributors who do  not need special care and checking. Finally
> power contributors could be  converted to developers who tutor next
> newbies. But without maintainer  identification we do not know who sent
> which modues and their quality. So  there is no possibility to know
> which contributor have chances to be  developer and which one need help
> and teacher.
>
>> My ideas initially and still are to make the lunar-dev mailinglist
>> open to non-developers, especially for this group of contributors.
>> However the lack of traffic on the lunar mailinglist makes me scared,
>> as people will just move their discussions from one list to another,
>> and we again don't achieve the goal we want: more people discussing
>> lunar.
>
> Its normal that people try to find good place to live in Internet.
> Source  based distros is good idea. Lunar looks very interesting. Making
> modules is  fun and good hobby for people who do not like to cook
> hamburgers in garden.  Anonymizing modules or code kills this
> satisfaction. Thus people leave lunar  trying to find other places where
> they will have little part of them in big  project but not anonymous
> brick in someones else wall.
>
>> I'm in the middle of releasing an ISO here, and will get back tho this
>> later.
>
> I think it is high time to close this subject. You told me how it looks
> and  now understand. I realized that do not fit to lunar and will manage
> to find  other distro which will be closer to my point of view. I do not
> want to  bother people and mess mailing list with my ideas which do not
> fit in here.
>
> greets,
> zbiggy