bug#9847: [PATCH 3/3] maint: use gnulib's gitlog-to-changelog instead of a ChangeLog file.

[Gary V. Vaughan]

[[Cc: Karl and Jim as they are involved in the other discussion too.]]

Hi Bob, Peter,

On 1 Nov 2011, at 21:14, Bob Friesenhahn wrote:
> On Mon, 31 Oct 2011, Peter Rosin wrote:
>> 
>> Sorry for the late response, but *all* relevant info from the ChangeLog is
>> generally *not* included in the git commit message. E.g. commit 72266fce
>> "docs: improve description of -no-undefined." where the mention of
>> co-author Matěj Týč is thrown out the window by this change.
> 
> Loss of this sort of information is indeed a significant concern since the 
> FSF "publishes" the software (with each FSF package being registered with the 
> US copyright office) and the ChangeLog file is a formal part of that 
> publication.  Submission of changesets into a shared repository is unlikely 
> to constitute legal publication in most countries.  The FSF needs to keep 
> track of every contributor in order to be able to defend the package's 
> copyright status.

Strongly agreed, and apologies for not thinking of that myself.

While suffering from patchy Internet and electricity due to the severe flooding 
in Bangkok right now, I used the time to write some patches to remedy this 
issue at source:

  http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnulib/2011-11/msg00007.html
  http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnulib/2011-11/msg00008.html

Please direct further comment to one or other of those threads where the right 
people will see them.

Cheers,
-- 
Gary V. Vaughan (gary AT gnu DOT org)