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Date:      Thu, 4 May 2000 03:04:30 +0100
From:      Nik Clayton <nik@freebsd.org>
To:        Sean Kelly <kelly@ad1440.net>
Cc:        doc@FreeBSD.ORG, jim@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Credit where it's due
Message-ID:  <20000504030430.A21461@catkin.nothing-going-on.org>
In-Reply-To: <000001bfb49e$f2a33d40$24d39580@jpl.nasa.gov>; from kelly@ad1440.net on Tue, May 02, 2000 at 04:36:41PM -0700
References:  <000001bfb49e$f2a33d40$24d39580@jpl.nasa.gov>

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[ *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: <Intel EtherExpress Pro 10/100B Ethernet> rev 0x05 int a irq 10
    fxp0: Driver written by David Greenman <dg@FreeBSD.org>
    [...]

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
-- 
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