Re: Crediting reviewers & bug-reporters in the release notes

Bruce Momjian wrote:
> \Alvaro Herrera wrote:
> > Excerpts from Bruce Momjian's message of jue jun 16 18:24:16 -0400 2011:
> >
> > > I should back up and explain that the reason for having usernames on
> > > release feature items is not to give credit, but rather to assign blame
> > > later, in case the features cause problems.
> >
> > I call BS on this. This PoV is perfect for justifying that sponsoring
> > companies do not need to get credited, but it's not really the truth.
> > Credit *is* given by having people listed in the release notes, whether
> > you explicitly admit it or not. And pissing off contributors by taking
> > it away is not something to be done lightly.
>
> I can tell you why _I_ added names to release note items starting 15
> years ago. By putting names on the release note items, if a bug was
> found in a release, I could easily know which developer to contact to
> get it fixed. I could have trolled the CVS logs, but it is often
> complex to find the right item. And why not put the developer names in
> the release notes? Who was going to read it except other developers?
>
> Well, a lot has changed in 15 years, and this name thing is only now
> being revisited, which is fine. I find it a happy coincidence that the
> names I used to help me are now seen as motivating Postgres
> contributions.
>
> Just a reality check, but I don't think the names in the release notes
> were originally seen as motivating developers because the assumption was
> that only a handful of people even cared about our release notes.
>
> > (If assigning blame and being point of contact is really the truth, why
> > is there no email address?)
>
> I already had everyone's email address and it was inefficient to type it
> on every item. I could easily look up their email addresses in my mail
> program.

If you want proof, we only started using full names, e.g. not "(Tom)",
in 9.0. It didn't matter if users knew who Tom was --- we did. Look at
the 6.1 release notes --- they are mostly only first names.

Second, if you want to get rid of the names, we can still place them in
SGML comments so developers can see who did a feature.

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> http://momjian.us
EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com

+ It's impossible for everything to be true. +