Re: [PATCH] Remove Roland McGrath et al. from libc.so banner

[Carlos O'Donell <carlos at redhat dot com>]

On 07/26/2017 01:55 PM, Zack Weinberg wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 26, 2017 at 1:24 PM, H.J. Lu <hongjiu.lu@intel.com> wrote:
>> I will check it today if there is no objection.
>>
>> -"GNU C Library "PKGVERSION RELEASE" release version "VERSION", by Roland McGrath et al.\n\
>> +"GNU C Library "PKGVERSION RELEASE" release version "VERSION".\n\
> 
> I think we should preserve Roland's name here.  He was the _original_
> author, and deserves to continue to be credited as such, even though
> he is no longer working on it.

I disagree in this particular case.

Roland is credited in many ways by having his name in
ChangeLog's, commit messages, and manual/contrib.texi.

Likewise I think manual/libc.texinfo should should be purged of
individual names.

My reasons are that this is a large consensus-based project, and
having individuals names front-and-center removes from that sense
of community and responsibility, perhaps even pushing away future
contributors by making them think such individuals are still
involved in the project (for good or ill).

Rhetorically speaking, what makes certain individuals and their
contributions more or less important than other individuals
and their contributions, that they should get their name on the
project books, or executable banners?

We made good step forward by removing source 'Contributed by'
entries, and we should continue progress in that direction.

Let me reiterate that I absolutely believe people should receive
credit where credit due, but I do not think that such banners
and front matter are the correct way to do this.

-- 
Cheers,
Carlos.