Practice of "Sponsored by" in commit messages

[John W. O'Brien]

On 2018/05/14 20:25, Julian Elischer wrote:
> On 15/5/18 7:40 am, John W. O'Brien 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)"?
> 
> Probably not for just a review, unless it was pretty in depth and took
> many hours.

It sounds like my example didn't make the point I intended. I was trying
to highlight the fact that the unqualified credit in the example makes
it seem like Alice's efforts were funded by the sponsor when they
weren't. If Alice's efforts were trivial while Bob's were substantial,
maybe that's no big deal. If the reverse is true, then I think there is
a problem, which is why I propose qualifying the credit.

    Ambiguous:    Sponsored by: Acme Corp
    Qualified:    Sponsored by: Acme Corp (Bob)

To be clear, a committer who "just" reviews and commits a contributed
patch should definitely be able to credit their employer at their
discretion.

> However we want to give some sort of acknowledgement
> to companies that do allow their work to be incorporated, and who allow
> their employees to do some FreeBSD work as part of their duties.
> It also makes their name familiar to the readers of the commit emails
> and often results in others seeking work there etc.
>  "Sponsored by:"  generally means "some (maybe small) part of this work
> was developed
> by someone being paid". It does not specify how much, and it is
> generally left to the committer
> to decide if it was meaningful.   In some cases it is deliberately NOT
> entered despite
> the developer being paid. (e.g. when a company is in stealth mode, or
> when some political
> issue is relevant and people don't want to draw attention).

I agree that the practice should not aim to quantify the relative
contributions, and that the decision to credit a sponsor should be left
to each participant.

>> 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

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 488 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-ports/attachments/20180517/9881d0d7/attachment.sig>