From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic =?utf-8?Q?Court=C3=A8s?=) Subject: Re: proposal: add "packagers" field (list of strings (names)) to package definition Date: Thu, 03 Dec 2015 12:40:17 +0200 Message-ID: <87poynvmr2.fsf@gnu.org> References: <565D565C.4030208@gmx.net> <87zixtezjy.fsf@igalia.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:33760) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1a4RJM-0002tE-B1 for guix-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 03 Dec 2015 05:40:29 -0500 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1a4RJJ-0002o6-5i for guix-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 03 Dec 2015 05:40:28 -0500 In-Reply-To: <87zixtezjy.fsf@igalia.com> (Andy Wingo's message of "Wed, 02 Dec 2015 13:43:29 +0000") List-Id: "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org To: Andy Wingo Cc: guix-devel Andy Wingo skribis: > On Tue 01 Dec 2015 08:12, Florian Paul Schmidt writ= es: > >> ...and encourage its use. The intended semantics is to list people >> that have contributed to the packaging effort. The motivation behind >> this proposal is that in many free software projects attribution can >> be a major source of motivation to get people involved. Having the >> packagers be first class citizens in the package definitions (as >> opposed to the information being only implicitly available through >> e.g. "git blame") would allow things like "guix package" or the >> package list on the website to display the contributor's names. > > Since you ask for opinions, -1 from me :) > > Currently Guix packages are more-or-less collectively owned. > Introducing this field implies to me an introduction of ownership of > packages. Ownership has a number of negative effects: it can inhibit > casual fixes and it can introduce unnecessary conflicts. I agree. For a while I wondered whether attaching names to packages via the =E2=80=98maintainers=E2=80=99 field would help people feel responsible, and= thus help keep packages maintained (but obviously this could only be used once the ratio of the number of contributors to the number of packages has become reasonable.) I=E2=80=99ve come to the same conclusion as you: that collective maintenanc= e is even better, and actually works reasonably well. The whole distro is our commons. Cheers, Ludo=E2=80=99.