Re: [g-a-devel]Commit permissions to at-spi ...

[Michael Meeks <michael ximian com>]

On Wed, 2002-08-14 at 13:00, Bill Haneman wrote:
> As you say, this is not a great measure, since your patches fixed a lot
> of formatting nits in my code

	I don't want to have this argument; but for the record, a large ammount
of my work was of this form of code removal eg.

static CORBA_boolean
-impl_removeSelection (PortableServer_Servant _servant,
+impl_removeSelection (PortableServer_Servant servant,
                      const CORBA_long selectionNum,
-                     CORBA_Environment * ev)
+                     CORBA_Environment *ev)
{
-  SpiText *text;
-  BonoboObject *obj;
+  AtkText *text = get_text_from_servant (servant);

-  obj = (bonobo_object_from_servant (_servant));
-  g_return_val_if_fail (IS_TEXT (obj), (CORBA_boolean)FALSE);
-  text = SPI_TEXT (obj);
+  g_return_val_if_fail (text != NULL, FALSE);

   return (CORBA_boolean)
-    atk_text_remove_selection (ATK_TEXT(text->atko), (gint)
selectionNum);
+    atk_text_remove_selection (text, (gint) selectionNum);
}

	Doing lots of cruft removal, and re-writing; I don't believe your
argument that Marc and you are the only primary authors holds water
under time-consuming deep scrutiny. But who cares.

> I agree that you have made substantial contributions to the code base,
> however.  Our policy to date, which is in line with what I was taught in
> Copyright class back in the dark ages, is that mods to existing files
> are treated as "derivative works" and thus continue to hold the original
> copyright notice, whereas newly committed files carry the copyright of
> the new author(s).

	Common sense requires and common courtesy suggests that any non-trival
change carry a joint copyright notice. Talking to lawyers is just a
waste of time and money, bringing acute paranoia and expensive middle
mangement problems. [ it's also excellent for the post-it note and memo
industry ].

>   We followed this convention, for instance, in the
> Java Access Bridge for GNOME's file "unknown.c", which was originally
> written by Erdi Gergo as part of "monkeybeans", though we ended up
> replacing almost all of the code.

	It should be a joint copyright statement; either way, there are several
files in at-spi that are substantially my own work, added to the project
by me etc. that bear only a (bogus by your argument) Sun copyright
currently. I personally think that's an honest mistake, so I don't care
as long as it's fixed.

	What I do care about, is that code that I wrote has stuff committed by
you - Bill Haneman - without proper scrutiny, or due thought. That
subsequently, I get called upon to figure out the wierd and wonderful
problems in the code, and then I can't commit fixes to what is
essentially 'my' code. [and it appears that I'm the only one who
understands it - ironicaly, despite my efforts to write for clarity].

> I will seek some clarification on this; bear in mind that UK/EU and US
> policies may not have harmonized fully on some of these points.  At any
> rate you are given prominent mention in AUTHORS; however I should

	Your mail runs out here ... but who cares about EU/UK vs. US law I
suspect you'd do better doing some hacking / bug fixing. If Sun
desparately want to hold copyright on at-spi, for reasons utterly opaque
to me, I would have been happy to assign copyright before I started, I'm
not a bigot in that sense, but now ...

> s/contributions/major contributions

	Hmm ?

> > 	My patch (to follow) will fix some of the modules almost exclusively
> > written by myself; But it would have been nice to have the greater
> > contribution acknowledged.

	It would be good to have my patch reviewed / committed, and would fix
some of the most glaring travesties, along with making the code more
efficient and functional.

	Regards,

		Michael.

-- 
 mmeeks gnu org  <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot