Changelog attributions

[Barry deFreese]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Rocco Stanzione" <grasshopper at linuxkungfu.org>
To: <ubuntu-devel at lists.ubuntu.com>
Sent: Monday, April 03, 2006 9:14 AM
Subject: Changelog attributions


> I've submitted a few patches, and some of them have been merged.  Of 
> those,
> some of them were attributed to me in the changelog and some were not.
>
> I'm sure the mysterious motivations for contributors to free software 
> differ
> from developer to developer, but no small part of my personal motivation 
> is
> to see my name in a changelog, which will eventually be a google hit, 
> which
> may at some point contribute to my ability to get a better job.  Is there 
> no
> policy to attribute patches to their contributors?  To be honest (with
> myself) this probably has a little to do with ego, but it has more to do, 
> I
> think, with credit where it's due - thanking programmers, translators,
> proofreaders, packagers etc. for their efforts in a small but important 
> way.
> If no such policy exists, I propose that it be created.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Rocco Stanzione

Rocco,

I can't speak for other but I know personally that there have been instances 
where I have not used the submitters changelog entry.  Not out of 
"maliciousness" or wanting to take the credit, it was basically a quick and 
dirty change or such.  I will try to be more diligent to that regard. 
However, you need to remember that if the package is synced from Debian 
later down the road the Ubuntu changelog may disappear anyway.

Thanks,

Barry deFreese (aka bddebian)