From owner-freebsd-doc Wed May 3 19: 6: 5 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Received: from nothing-going-on.demon.co.uk (nothing-going-on.demon.co.uk [193.237.89.66]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1B33B37BF41; Wed, 3 May 2000 19:06:01 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from nik@nothing-going-on.demon.co.uk) Received: (from nik@localhost) by nothing-going-on.demon.co.uk (8.9.3/8.9.3) id DAA27287; Thu, 4 May 2000 03:04:30 +0100 (BST) (envelope-from nik) Date: Thu, 4 May 2000 03:04:30 +0100 From: Nik Clayton To: Sean Kelly Cc: doc@FreeBSD.ORG, jim@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Credit where it's due Message-ID: <20000504030430.A21461@catkin.nothing-going-on.org> References: <000001bfb49e$f2a33d40$24d39580@jpl.nasa.gov> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0.1i In-Reply-To: <000001bfb49e$f2a33d40$24d39580@jpl.nasa.gov>; from kelly@ad1440.net on Tue, May 02, 2000 at 04:36:41PM -0700 Organization: FreeBSD Project Sender: owner-freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org [ *not* speaking with the Manager's hat on ] On Tue, May 02, 2000 at 04:36:41PM -0700, Sean Kelly wrote: > So, I want to know: is this the new policy for documentation submitted to > the FreeBSD project? Whoever last edits it gets complete credit? I think it's policy not to have a policy. It's not really come up before. > If it isn't the new policy, then what is? Should we say there's an > implicit BSD license applied to material submitted? For example, do we > want adomonitions such as "This documentation contains text written by Joe > Blow" appearing in our preface? Not sure. To give you an analogy, one of the things that really throws me everytime I see a Linux box booting up is the various copyrights as the boot probes go by. I'd never expect to see a [...] fxp0: rev 0x05 int a irq 10 fxp0: Driver written by David Greenman [...] in FreeBSD. I kind of feel the same way about the Handbook -- it's why there's no explicit credit for me in makeworld.html (although, oddly enough, there is one in the PPP chapter for some reason). Having said that, I can completely see your point about public credit being a good and useful thing. On the third hand, I don't want a situation whereby there's a honking big piece of text at the front of every chapter listing everyone who's ever submitted a patch to it. On the fourth hand, nor do I particularly want the job of deciding whether someone's contribution is ``significant'' enough for a credit in the documentation (as opposed to the CVS logs). That way lies madness. Perhaps a workable solution would be an "acknowledgements" block at the start of the Handbook (and/or FAQ), something like: The FreeBSD Documentation Project would like to acknowledge the work of the following individuals. * John Fieber, Documentation Project Manager, 1995-98 * Jun Kuriyama, principle liason, Japanese translation team * Sean Kelly, author of much of the material in the _Printing_ chapter and so on, and so forth, with no ``in chapter'' credits. Thoughts? N -- Internet connection, $19.95 a month. Computer, $799.95. Modem, $149.95. Telephone line, $24.95 a month. Software, free. USENET transmission, hundreds if not thousands of dollars. Thinking before posting, priceless. Somethings in life you can't buy. For everything else, there's MasterCard. -- Graham Reed, in the Scary Devil Monastery To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message