Re: @author tags

by Ralph Goers :: Rate this Message:

On May 26, 2012, at 10:55 AM, Gary Gregory wrote:

On Fri, May 25, 2012 at 4:18 PM, ceki <ceki@...> wrote:

On 25.05.2012 19:42, Gary Gregory wrote:

Over in Commons-lang we've been following the Apache guideline to avoid
@author tags, these grow quickly to long and stale lists. The POM can be
used to track who contributes, all in one place. I propose to remove
@author tags here as well (1.x has these tags, I am not sure about 2.0).

This has been proposed several times in the past and rejected each time.

I do not see why we should go against the Apache board's decision:

- author tags are officially discouraged. these create difficulties in
establishing the proper ownership and the protection of our
committers. there are other social issues dealing with collaborative
development, but the Board is concerned about the legal ramifications
around the use of author tags

from:
http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/jakarta-jmeter-dev/200402.mbox/%3C4039F65E.7020406@...%3E

As I recall this was a strong recommendation, not a mandate. While I would prefer to see them removed I also think it is appropriate to respect Ceki's wishes regarding Log4j 1.x.

Furthermore and because I have not worked with Ceki in the past, I cannot
help but see a conflict of interest with his non-ASF logging projects.

On this I have to disagree. I will admit that I had this same thought in the past, but although Ceki clearly prefers SLF4J/Logback to Log4j he hasn't done anything in this community to prevent competition, such as the work I've done on Log4j 2. In fact, he did take a brief look at it to validate some areas of Log4j2 such as its binding to SLF4J. Likewise I also participate in the Logback and SLF4J communities and will occasionally mention something regarding Log4j2 and Ceki has never told me I'm out of line (I try really hard not to be). Furthermore, although he states on this web site that Logback is better than Log4j, I can't really fault him for that since it is true.

To be honest, I'd love to see Ceki contribute code to Log4j2 and, in fact, there is nothing from preventing him from doing that.

Ralph

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