Re: author names in .c files

[Dustin J. Mitchell]

On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 6:03 AM, Bruno Haible <address@hidden> wrote:
> You should be able to feel reward by your name in a file that you wrote.

I don't have any feelings one way or the other on the application of
this principle to gnulib, but I thought I'd add two points to this
particular question all the same.

First, adding author names to files suggests that there is some
ownership, in copyright terms, of that file -- and that is not the
case, particularly in GNU projects.  Second, new contributors tend to
leave the existing author lines alone, which can lead to a case where
the sole listed author is only responsible for 10% or less of the
file, but nobody else has felt bold enough to add their name, let
alone remove the listed author's name.

Dustin

-- 
Open Source Storage Engineer
http://www.zmanda.com