From owner-freebsd-doc Sun May 7 22:17:31 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Received: from dt051n0b.san.rr.com (dt051n0b.san.rr.com [204.210.32.11]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 92E7C37B8A1; Sun, 7 May 2000 22:17:28 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from DougB@gorean.org) Received: from gorean.org (doug@master [10.0.0.2]) by dt051n0b.san.rr.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id WAA62273; Sun, 7 May 2000 22:17:27 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from DougB@gorean.org) Message-ID: <39164DE7.F99E6DE5@gorean.org> Date: Sun, 07 May 2000 22:17:27 -0700 From: Doug Barton Organization: Triborough Bridge & Tunnel Authority X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.72 [en] (X11; U; FreeBSD 5.0-CURRENT-0422 i386) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Nik Clayton Cc: Sean Kelly , doc@FreeBSD.ORG, jim@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Credit where it's due References: <000001bfb49e$f2a33d40$24d39580@jpl.nasa.gov> <20000504030430.A21461@catkin.nothing-going-on.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Nik Clayton wrote: > 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 wouldn't expect to see that either, but I don't think it's a valid analogy. You don't _have_ to go to the handbook, you do have to use the right device drivers for your stuff. Additionally, most of the code in the system is a collaboration of multiple individuals, whereas handbook sections are almost universally written by single authors, then updated or improved in small ways over time. > 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). It's certainly your choice to do what you will with what you write. I have some of each. The ones I put my name on are ones that someone might want to contact me about, and/or ones that I intend to show professionally. > Having said that, I can completely see your point about public credit being > a good and useful thing. More than just useful, a professional necessity in many cases. Having previously been in the business of selling myself in this arena, it's one thing to say, "Here's all the cool documentation I've written," vs. "Let me show you some places where prominent companies/projects use my work." > 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. Agreed on both counts. > 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. My personal preference would be that the credit show up along with the work. However, in order to avoid the insanity in points three and four above, I'd say that this would be an acceptable compromise if the weight of opinion goes against keeping the credit in the chapter. There is another factor which should be considered. Part of the project that doesn't get a lot of attention is the management of volunteers. For all the noble thoughts, there is still an element of value for someone doing the scut work to see their "name in lights," so to speak. Taking credit away from those who deserve it would be a terrible shame, as well as being a horrible message to send to our valuable volunteers. Doug -- "Live free or die" - State motto of my ancestral homeland, New Hampshire Do YOU Yahoo!? To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message