Re: [dna-dev] @author tags in our codebase
Randall Hauch wrote on 17/11/08 22:17:
I've recently read a suggestions for open source communities that
the
author names are removed from the content. In the case of DNA's
codebase, that would mean removing the @author tags.
May I ask where?
tags:
1. When there are no @author tags, then there is a far smaller
notion of ownership by the author(s). On one side of this, the
author(s) may not appreciate changes to "their" code, and on the
other side, non-authors may feel intimidated about working on
code for which they are not an author. IMO, we want to
_discourage_ ownership and _encourage_ everyone to work in any
area of the code they want.
+1...but is really @author tag intimating someone, or giving ownership
to some other? Quiet frankly not for me.
Anyway I agree on the _discurage_ownership and _encourage_everyone to
work in any area, so if it can help, remove @author tag.
1. @author tags can be inaccurate. SVN has the true history of
who
contributed exactly what code.
+1
The only benefit I can think of is that the @author tag does help to
give some notion of who is the "expert" of the class, in case they
need to be consulted. However, I don't believe this is really much of
a reason, since it's far better to consult the SVN history and see who
actually modified the different parts of the code. In fact, the
annotated views in Fisheye even show on many of the lines the name of
the last person to change it. For example,
see
http://fisheye.jboss.org/browse/DNA/trunk/dna-common/src/main/java/org/jb...
abosolutely better to use fisheye...if fine people of JBoss.org would
also mind to upgrade it to a more recent version it would be even
better. Also Jira integration may help a lot.
I would just add that if we decide to remove the tag we have to change
also the license information at the beginnig of any file which say:
/* 2
<http://fisheye.jboss.org/browse/DNA/trunk/dna-graph/src/main/java/org/jbo...
* JBoss, Home of Professional Open Source. 3
<http://fisheye.jboss.org/browse/DNA/trunk/dna-graph/src/main/java/org/jbo...
* Copyright 2008, Red Hat Middleware LLC, and individual contributors 4
<http://fisheye.jboss.org/browse/DNA/trunk/dna-graph/src/main/java/org/jbo...
* as indicated by the @author tags. See the copyright.txt file in the 5
<http://fisheye.jboss.org/browse/DNA/trunk/dna-graph/src/main/java/org/jbo...
* distribution for a full listing of individual contributors.
bye
S.