Re: [Axiom-developer] Re: [Axiom-commit] SF.net SVN: axiom: [426] branches/wh-sandbox

[Gabriel Dos Reis]

On Thu, 1 Feb 2007, Waldek Hebisch wrote:

| > On Thu, 1 Feb 2007, Waldek Hebisch wrote:
| >
| > | Gabriel Dos Reis wrote:
| > | > On Wed, 31 Jan 2007 address@hidden wrote:
| > | >
| > | > [...]
| > | >
| > | > | Modified: branches/wh-sandbox/src/etc/asq.c.pamphlet
| > | > | ===================================================================
| > | > | --- branches/wh-sandbox/src/etc/asq.c.pamphlet        2007-01-27 
16:50:57 UTC (rev 425)
| > | > | +++ branches/wh-sandbox/src/etc/asq.c.pamphlet        2007-02-01 
05:09:31 UTC (rev 426)
| > | > | @@ -2,1559 +2,929 @@
| > | > |  \usepackage{axiom}
| > | > |  \begin{document}
| > | > |  \title{\$SPAD/etc asq.c}
| > | > | -\author{Timothy Daly}
| > | > | +\author{Waldek Hebisch}
| > | >
| > | > I believe the conventional wisdom would suggest that you add your name
| > | > as co-author as opposed to replacing the existing author, even if you
| > | > have rewritten it. If this were a separate new program not building on
| > | > previous ideas, I would that it is OK.
| > | >
| > |
| > | Hmm, I undersand that conventional wisdom is to err on side of giving
| > | more credit for work than too little credit, but I find this suggestion
| > | a little extreme.
| >
| > I'm not so sure.
| >
| > | Gaby, did you look at both programs: the new asq is a _new_ program.
| >
| > I read over your new "asq" and the old asq and followed your
| > explanation, *before* I sent my mail.
| >
| > My opinion is that your name should be added co-author, not replace
| > the original author.  Or, call the program something else and
| > acknowledge that this new program greatly benefited from the existing
| > one, in particular from its documentation and its errors. But having
| > two proram doing almost the same thing will be very confusing.  So, I
| > believe the conventional wisdom is good here.
| >
|
| I fail to see how filename affects authorship status of a file.

Me enither.  Why do you think it has anything to do with this?

[...]

| Note that I do not claim any credit for the old asq program.

Yes, and listing only your name as author implies claiming credits.

| > A ways to kepp a project attractice and collegial is to be cautious
| > with credit.
| >
| > Look at GCC for example.  Most parts of it have nothing common with
| > the GCC from 1996 or 1997.  In particular, look at the C preprocessor;
| > it has been *completely* rewritten from scratch, with readically
| > different ideas.  Nonetheless, the authorship displays the people who
| > did not "directly" contribute to the new program in any form.
| >
|
| I do not see information about authors in preprocessor program files,
| only note like:
|
|    Copyright (C) 1986, 1987, 1989, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998,
|    1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006
|    Free Software Foundation, Inc.
|    Contributed by Per Bothner, 1994-95.
|    Based on CCCP program by Paul Rubin, June 1986
|    Adapted to ANSI C, Richard Stallman, Jan 1987
|
| IMHO such note is misleading by ommision, but at least dates allow
| to infer that this information is highly incomplete.

The prominent omission is the name of the second author you found in
cpp.texi to which we should add that of Neil Booth.  You can cross
check those assertions either by looking the ChangeLog or digging the
archives (don't look at the ChangeLog in libcpp/, look at those in gcc/).

The original CPP worked on strings (contrary to ISO C specification),
and was an external program.  The new CPP works on tokens and is
integrated to the C-family front-ends.  There are very signficant
differences.  The authors took the pain to preserve the old behaviour
through within the new, correct, implementation.

Put blunt, I think you did a grave act of violence by replacing
the existing asq.c with the new one witout explicit acknowlegement as
co-author (which I believe is the correct thing), and  acknowledgment
section that traces the history of asq.c.

| I see
| Richard Stallman mentioned as a coauthor of cpp.texi, but comparing
| cpp.texinfo from gcc-1.35 with cpp.texi from gcc-4.1.1 I can find
| a few passages are taken almost verbatim from the old version.
| I would guess that careful examination would show more connections.
| So I consider it reasonable to state that Stallman is a coauthor
| (assuming he did wrote version contained in gcc-1.35).
|
| Concering programs: I did not look at preprocessor files.  But I did
| found surprising similarities between some parts of gcc-1.35 and
| parts of gcc-4.1.1 -- after many edits code looks very different,
| but clearly is still the same code.

It would be very interesting to see which portions of which files you
look at.

-- Gaby