[Subject field adjusted to reflect the change of topic] Quoting NoisyCoil (2025-08-23 04:00:02) > On 22/08/25 23:00, Jonas Smedegaard wrote: > > What I find bad is to not credit*in changelog* the person contributing > > a change notable of being mentioned in changelog. > > I never thanked you for this very basic courtesy you've shown me (and > everybody else, I'm sure) over my year contributing to Debian, even if > the changes I proposed were trivial and you could absolutely have done > them yourself, even when you ended up not merging precisely my changes, > but you still credited me in recognition of the work involved. So I take > advantage of this opportunity, thank you! In the context of Debian, this > is something I specifically learnt from you.
You are quite welcome.
This is the first time I learn that someone took notice of this.
You thank me for thanking you - I appreciate your appreciation :-)
What I do is relatively simple, but totally inefficient and not
"needed": When I close a bugreport in a changelog entry, I revisit the
bugreport and thank those who contributed substantially to it - the
person reporting, persons providing central input on the issue, and the
person providing a patch.
On a related note, when I import of a newer upstream source, I mention
that separately from other packaging changes in the changelog, listing
it as done by upstream, not me, to more clearly credit their work.
Example:
hx (25.01.1+20250505-1) experimental; urgency=medium
[ upstream ]
* development snapshot;
highlights:
+ fix panic when pressing * after the end of the file
+ add file explorer
[ Jonas Smedegaard ]
* drop unused duplicate patch
* update Vcs-* fields;
closes: bug#1102355, thanks to Bastian Germann
* install completion script for fish;
closes: bug#1104673, thanks to Sylvain Terrien
-- Jonas Smedegaard <d...@jones.dk> Tue, 06 May 2025 14:42:29 +0200
Just came to think of it: To me, acknowledging contributions by
crediting goes further than contributions directly to Debian packages.
After every import of new upstream source, I update debian/copyright,
and consider it a fun little game to doscover most possible upstream
authors that I can credit in there. I strive to make that file easily
readable, not only for machines but also for humans, as my main interest
is not to satisfy legal requirements but to give credit.
Some upstream developers choose liberal licensing where crdediting is
not required, and some in Debian argue that debian/copyright should only
include authors when required by (mostly copyleft) licensing. I agree
that we do not *need* to include authors, but I *want* to give a shit
about all those marvellous contributors that made a big or small impact
on the code that I redistribute in Debian: I want to be nice and credit
not only those requiring it but all contributors.
A recent [talk] presents (I guess¹) an approach to maintaining
debian/copyright that is efficient and machine-readable, but at the
expense of not being human readable. I find that sad, because to me that
renders the file usable *only* for legal purposes.
Ideally I want to live in a society where inventions are shared by
default, not personal by default. But even in that ideal society, where
I am not forced by stupid laws to keep track of copyright-circumventing
legal statements, I still want to creadit all those lovely people and
organisations who choose to share their inventions. And the way I see
that I can acknowledge their work is by voluntary crediting them.
- Jonas
[talk]:
https://debconf25.debconf.org/talks/166-dcopyright-how-to-get-99-of-your-uploads-to-new-pass-the-ftp-masters-review/
¹ I visited the presenter of the talk, Mike Gabriel, some weeks before
Debconf where we discussed his upcoming talk. He was open to my views
but I doubt that he radically changed his talk on sich short notice -
I tried locate a recording of the talk but failed, so I guess it wasn't
recorded.
--
* Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
* Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/
* Sponsorship: https://ko-fi.com/drjones
[x] quote me freely [ ] ask before reusing [ ] keep private
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