Re: proposal: add "packagers" field (list of strings (names)) to package definition

[Thompson, David]

On Wed, Dec 2, 2015 at 8:43 AM, Andy Wingo <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Tue 01 Dec 2015 08:12, Florian Paul Schmidt <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> ...and encourage its use. The intended semantics is to list people
>> that have contributed to the packaging effort. The motivation behind
>> this proposal is that in many free software projects attribution can
>> be a major source of motivation to get people involved. Having the
>> packagers be first class citizens in the package definitions (as
>> opposed to the information being only implicitly available through
>> e.g. "git blame") would allow things like "guix package" or the
>> package list on the website to display the contributor's names.
>
> Since you ask for opinions, -1 from me :)
>
> Currently Guix packages are more-or-less collectively owned.
> Introducing this field implies to me an introduction of ownership of
> packages.  Ownership has a number of negative effects: it can inhibit
> casual fixes and it can introduce unnecessary conflicts.
>
> The kind of ego-based positive feedback that having a maintainer field
> would introduce is negative IMO.  It is good if people feel attached to
> Guix-the-project and GuixSD-the-software-distribution, and to a degree
> they get that by copyright, git blame, and NEWS.  Feeling attached to a
> particular package is not as useful for the project or the distribution.

+1

- Dave