Subject: Proposal: Drop author fields from copyright headers

From: Robert Ancell <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2013 15:27:11 +1200

Hi all,

I'd like to propose we drop the author fields from the copyright headers in
Mir - they're very hard to keep up to date and more accurate information
can be retrieved using 'bzr annotate'. Chances are they either only list
the initial author or are copied and pasted from other code [1].

Most people I've talked to in the team don't have any love for them -
anyone want to keep them?

--Robert

[1] http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~mir-team/mir/trunk/revision/1000

---

From: Daniel van Vugt <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2013 11:30:04 +0800

I think it does make sense to have author fields when they're accurate.

Hopefully people will have some pride in new source files they write. 
But more importantly, if the author field is accurate then you know who 
to ask about the code.

The issues we've had recently were just bzr getting confused from file 
renames and large chunks of code moving around. That should not be the 
norm though.

On 23/08/13 11:27, Robert Ancell wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I'd like to propose we drop the author fields from the copyright headers
> in Mir - they're very hard to keep up to date and more accurate
> information can be retrieved using 'bzr annotate'. Chances are they
> either only list the initial author or are copied and pasted from other
> code [1].
>

---

From: Robert Ancell <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2013 17:15:07 +1200

https://code.launchpad.net/~robert-ancell/mir/kill-author-fields/+merge/181704

On Fri, Aug 23, 2013 at 3:27 PM, Robert Ancell
<[email-masked]>wrote:

> in Mir - they're very hard to keep up to date and more accurate information

---

From: Alan Griffiths <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2013 15:09:47 +0100

On 23/08/13 04:27, Robert Ancell wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I'd like to propose we drop the author fields from the copyright
> headers in Mir - they're very hard to keep up to date and more
> accurate information can be retrieved using 'bzr annotate'. Chances
> are they either only list the initial author or are copied and pasted
> from other code [1].
>

Wouldn't the first thing to change be our coding guidelines?

http://unity.ubuntu.com/mir/cppguide/index.html?showone=File_Comments#File_Comments