[yt-dev] License switch: remove author tags

Matthew Turk matthewturk at gmail.com
Tue Sep 10 13:23:12 PDT 2013


Hi Nathan,

On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 4:12 PM, Nathan Goldbaum <nathan12343 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I'd like to bring up for discussion something I brought up on the license
> switch PR:
> https://bitbucket.org/yt_analysis/yt/pull-request/596/relicensing-to-bsd-3-clause/
>
> Specifically, I think we should remove the author tags, which Matt left in
> the source code after changing the license tags.  My reasons are fleshed out
> in a section from the book Team Geek, by Brian Fitzpatrick and Ben
> Collins-Sussman, the lead devs on the subversion project:
>
> http://books.google.com/books?id=Iwk_pKeBc9gC&pg=PA48&lpg=PA48&dq=%22putting+your+name+in+source+code+files%22&source=bl&ots=0iMWJPf70z&sig=z1n4Qo7FzvHf2Gd_EDENJbjidiU&hl=en&sa=X&ei=hngvUtf1F4qLiAK9soCQCw&ved=0CFgQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=%22putting%20your%20name%20in%20source%20code%20files%22&f=false

(I love this book, by the way.)

>
> While the poisonous patterns described in the book haven't happenned in yt
> in the past, there's always the chance that it will happen in the future.  I
> think we also lose nothing by dropping the author tags since the authorship
> information encoded in the tags has been rendered redundant and incomplete
> by the authorship information encoded in the mercurial repository.
>
> I'd prefer to just have "the yt development team" as the author on all
> source code files.
>
> I don't want this suggestions to hold up acceptance of Matt's PR and I will
> happily change all of the author tags myself if we decide to remove them.
>

I am +1 on removing the author tags.  That being said, I consciously
decided *not* to, for basically two reasons which are somewhat
related.  The first is that I think removing the author tags will
disproportionately impact individuals who perhaps have contributed
specific files or analysis modules but have not contributed a large
quantity of code to the overall base of yt.  The second reason is
really my main one: I don't want to be as strongly associated with yt
as I currently am.  Not because I don't have pride in it (I do), but
because I don't want people who aren't deep in the code development to
believe that I'm the only person contributing, and I do not think that
does favors for *anyone*.  (I still receive many emails off-list,
people say things to me that I have to correct about what yt is, etc
etc.)  It creates an impression of consolidation of responsibility, as
well as undermines the credit that others receive for their
contributions.  Having names (that aren't mine) on source files
reduces the apparent consolidation.  I was leery of making such a
change, because removing names felt really wrong to me to do on my
own.

So, I'm fine with removing them if everyone else is too.  But I'd also
like to trade this for having some type of mechanism for public
recognition of efforts.  (In addition to another paper, which is
probably still a bit off.)  Perhaps something like a core team, or
list of contributors, on the website?  Something that can be pointed
to, put on a CV, anything.

Is that reasonable?

-Matt

> Cheers,
>
> Nathan
>
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