Practice of "Sponsored by" in commit messages

[Maxim Sobolev]

John, no, not really, sorry. Work is done, credit is given. The form and
amount of this credit is between whoever does the work and whoever is being
credited. I don't see why is there any third-party to be involved in
governing whether or not this credit is "appropriate", "sufficient" or "all
encompassing" for the work in question. This is just a credit, it does not
affect the quality of work, nor the license (which is 2-clause BSD) nor the
copyright holder. Three things that really matter long-time. So "Sponsored
by" it's just the message on the t-shirt, having only meaning to whoever
produces the piece and whoever wears it, but nothing in particular to the
outside world. IMHO.

-Max

On Thu, May 17, 2018 at 3:43 PM, John W. O'Brien <john at saltant.com> wrote:

> On 2018/05/14 20:14, Maxim Sobolev wrote:
> > What's wrong with a current practice. Why is it of any concern to you,
> > John? Just curious that is not very clear from your message. It is like
> > someone trying to moderate what people in general or some group in
> > particular (e.g. freebsd committers) are allowed to put on their
> > t-shirts just because you find it offensive or inappropriate.
>
> I don't find crediting sponsors offensive nor inappropriate. Quite the
> contrary. What I find problematic is when multiple people do work, not
> all with sponsorship or the same sponsorship, and only one person's
> sponsor is mentioned in a way that seems to imply that all the work was
> sponsored.
>
> What I'm proposing is not to end or ban the practice, but to improve and
> refine it so that sponsors are credited for what they sponsor and not
> for what they don't sponsor.
>
> Is that clearer?
>
> > On Mon, May 14, 2018, 4:40 PM John W. O'Brien <john at saltant.com
> > <mailto:john at saltant.com>> wrote:
> >
> >     Hello FreeBSD Ports,
> >
> >     The Committer's Guide section on Commit Log Messages [0], doesn't
> cover
> >     the use of the "Sponsored by" key word. As a non-committer
> contributor,
> >     it only recently occurred to me to wonder what work that credit is
> >     intended to represent, and whether some light definition would be
> >     helpful to reduce ambiguity.
> >
> >     When a committer credits a sponsor of theirs, from which the
> contributor
> >     received no sponsorship, the portrayal feels a little awkward. Does
> this
> >     strike the list as a problem, and if so, how ought it be solved?
> >
> >     To make this concrete, allow me to illustrate the situation.
> >
> >     Alice, working on her own time, prepares and contributes a patch.
> Bob,
> >     who works for Acme Corp, reviews and commits the patch on company
> time.
> >     The commit message includes "Sponsored by: Acme Corp". Alice eagerly
> >     awaits her check from Acme Corp. Should the commit message have read
> >     "Sponsored by: Acme Corp (Bob)"?
> >
> >     This could be extensible to multiple sponsorships. If, instead, Alice
> >     prepares the patch having received a grant to do so from Best Sys
> Dev,
> >     the commit message could state "Sponsored by: Acme Corp (Bob), Best
> Sys
> >     Dev (Alice)".
> >
> >     [0]
> >     https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/
> committers-guide/article.html#commit-log-message
> >
> >     PS: I realize that this issue transcends ports, but it's not clear
> where
> >     I should send this instead, and this list seems like it would have a
> >     reasonably high concentration of people with a stake in the
> discussion.
>
>
> --
> John W. O'Brien
> OpenPGP keys:
>     0x33C4D64B895DBF3B
>
>