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Please re-add original author to docs and license

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Re: Please re-add original author to docs and license

#51

Post by Anthony-G »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #36
bigiain wrote: post #15

Interestingly (to me at least), I was just reading he memcached website (from another HN submission), and even though it's been completely rewritten in a different language, they still credit Brad Fitzpatrick as the original author. No reason not to. Anyone arguing otherwise is being petty and mean in my opinion. Sure, a bunch of new people have written some/most/all of the current codebase. But they built on top of…

This strikes me as a very old question. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus In this specific case there seems to be no argument that the original author is who he says he is and he has given specific reasons why it would be in his advantage to be credited as the original author I can't imagine many people denying him that.

Thanks for the link. I hadn’t ever heard of the Ship of Theseus – though I’ve referred to Trigger’s Broom from Only Fools and Horses when discussing this concept with others: the character worked as a street-sweeper and claimed to have had the same broom for the past 20 years (however, he had changed both the handle and the head multiple times during this time).

Re: Please re-add original author to docs and license

#52

Post by nyxtom »

gfalcao wrote: post #21

Hello, I'm Gabriel, the original author of Guake. Let me clarify the whole story: In 2006 I had just gotten into college and was learning Python by myself, my English skills (also self-taught) were pretty low and I had to rely a lot on whatever material was available in Portuguese (I'm from Brazil). In 2007 I had an amazing college teacher, the "drop of water in the desert" kind of teacher. He was trying to convince…

Gabe! Good for you, hope this works out for you. Had fun working with you in Miami Beach years back :D I can personally attest to @gfalcao's competency here ^^

Re: Please re-add original author to docs and license

#54

Post by SamBam »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #36
bigiain wrote: post #15

Interestingly (to me at least), I was just reading he memcached website (from another HN submission), and even though it's been completely rewritten in a different language, they still credit Brad Fitzpatrick as the original author. No reason not to. Anyone arguing otherwise is being petty and mean in my opinion. Sure, a bunch of new people have written some/most/all of the current codebase. But they built on top of…

This strikes me as a very old question. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus In this specific case there seems to be no argument that the original author is who he says he is and he has given specific reasons why it would be in his advantage to be credited as the original author I can't imagine many people denying him that.

Ship of Theseus is a great argument for crediting the original author, even if it's been 100% re-written over time: The ship would have started from one (or more) expert ship builders, while the continual patching could be done by comparatively-unskilled hands.

(Not that this is the case in software, but merely saying that that parable would lend itself to an easy answer as to whether to credit the original or not.)

Re: Please re-add original author to docs and license

#55

Post by shaunxcode »

gsemet wrote: post #41
gfalcao wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello Gaetan, thank you so much for adding the authorship back. Please don't get me wrong, I know you're not responsible for it disappearing and I'm not looking to blame anyone. I'm happy that Guake is still being active maintained. I'll submit a pull-request with the story soon. Thank you!

cool ! If only we could take a beer together ! But, at least, I hope, this will end up in a nice story and blog posts about opensource software development. We are all humans, mistakes can be made. The project lived a lot actually, and many files has been changed, the "chain" of maintainers made some of them not knowing the others !

This whole exchange being so cordial and positive makes me really happy.

Re: Please re-add original author to docs and license

#56

Post by evmar »

bigiain wrote: post #15

Interestingly (to me at least), I was just reading he memcached website (from another HN submission), and even though it's been completely rewritten in a different language, they still credit Brad Fitzpatrick as the original author. No reason not to. Anyone arguing otherwise is being petty and mean in my opinion. Sure, a bunch of new people have written some/most/all of the current codebase. But they built on top of…

My recollection is that the original prototype was written in Perl, but the oldest commit on github[1] is in C, which is still the language it uses today. The original C version had big contributions from someone other than Brad starting from the third commit (search the git commit log for 'avva'). Definitely still Brad's baby though.

(Disclaimer: I was an early, minor, contributor. It looks like the second commit mentioning me was to fix a bug introduced by my first one, whoops.)

[1] https://github.com/memcached/memcached/tree/32f382b605b4565b...

Re: Please re-add original author to docs and license

#57

Post by VBprogrammer »

SamBam wrote: post #54
VBprogrammer wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This strikes me as a very old question. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus In this specific case there seems to be no argument that the original author is who he says he is and he has given specific reasons why it would be in his advantage to be credited as the original author I can't imagine many people denying him that.

Ship of Theseus is a great argument for crediting the original author, even if it's been 100% re-written over time: The ship would have started from one (or more) expert ship builders, while the continual patching could be done by comparatively-unskilled hands. (Not that this is the case in software, but merely saying that that parable would lend itself to an easy answer as to whether to credit the original or not.)

You could equally argue that Gail's law is applicable. Without someone creating something simple but working it may never have existed.

Re: Please re-add original author to docs and license

#58

Post by skykooler »

thom wrote: post #18

If anybody reads this and decides it sounds like a nice way to summon a terminal, be aware that if you're a non-Gnome user you can use Yukuake in KDE, and the --drop-down option to the XFCE terminal. I usually have it bound to Ctrl-` and find it very convenient (also someone satisfying to just show and hide for no reason other than I like the animation).

Tilix also has a "Quake Terminal" mode.

Re: Please re-add original author to docs and license

#59

Post by StavrosK »

thom wrote: post #18

If anybody reads this and decides it sounds like a nice way to summon a terminal, be aware that if you're a non-Gnome user you can use Yukuake in KDE, and the --drop-down option to the XFCE terminal. I usually have it bound to Ctrl-` and find it very convenient (also someone satisfying to just show and hide for no reason other than I like the animation).

That is a nice way to summon a terminal! I wish kitty supported it.

Re: Please re-add original author to docs and license

#60

Post by nocman »

gsemet wrote: post #41
gfalcao wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello Gaetan, thank you so much for adding the authorship back. Please don't get me wrong, I know you're not responsible for it disappearing and I'm not looking to blame anyone. I'm happy that Guake is still being active maintained. I'll submit a pull-request with the story soon. Thank you!

cool ! If only we could take a beer together ! But, at least, I hope, this will end up in a nice story and blog posts about opensource software development. We are all humans, mistakes can be made. The project lived a lot actually, and many files has been changed, the "chain" of maintainers made some of them not knowing the others !

I have an idea.

Why don't you set up a video conference between you, each bring your own beer, and share a toast to the fair-minded way in which this was resolved?

The world needs more endings like this.

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