Re: Heads-up: Pending removal of 'Created by' from the ports tree

On 7/5/22 16:26, Alexey Dokuchaev wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 05, 2022 at 03:16:17PM +0200, Tobias C. Berner wrote:
>> ...
>> portmgr is intending to remove all occurrences of 'Created by' from the
>> tree by the end of this quarter [1].
>>
>> This is done to honor those that are actively maintaining the ports tree
>> and not those that were there before it was cool.
> 
> Before what "was cool"?  Those who maintain a particular port are listed
> as MAINTAINER, it's a public offical field with pkg(8).  "Created by" is
> an optional courtesy tag for those who want to be remembered as the port's
> author.  While we no longer encourage it, some of us still prefer to use
> it; dropping it forcibly is tactless and unjust.
> 
> Porting new software can be hard, and allowing the author to be visibly
> noted is a valuable sign of appreciation the FreeBSD Project can offer
> to those people.  What you suggest is utterly upsetting and demotivating.

Yes, I can relate to that, albeit in a different way. I wrote the 
current iteration of the math/polymake port and initially added a 
'Created By:' line at the top of the ports' Makefile. My name was 
removed and replaced by the author of the original port, even though I 
made it clear that I wrote everything from scratch. At the time that was 
somewhat demotivating.

To be clear, I don't hold a grutch against anyone involved. I got over 
it quickly, but I still think it's strange to credit people in cases 
like this were a port gets removed from the tree, years go by, someone 
else revives the port and basically starts from a blank slate.

Whatever we decide to do, I'd like to see the same rules applied to all 
(and in a consistent manner if possible ;-)).

Best
Philipp