Re: Crediting sponsors in release notes?

On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 05:29, Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> wrote:
> Selena Deckelmann wrote:
>> Hi!
>>
>> On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 2:30 PM, Nasby, Jim <JNasby(at)enovafinancial(dot)com> wrote:
>> > On May 12, 2011, at 4:23 PM, Selena Deckelmann wrote:
>> >> The overhead of tracking who sponsored what on a feature-by-feature
>> >> basis in release notes seems beyond what volunteers can be expected to
>> >> keep track of. I also wouldn't want to have developer time spent on
>> >> resolving conflicts in release notes about who sponsored what.
>> >
>> > I don't think the tracking would be that burdensome as long as people are using good submit messages. For example, searching the commit log for "Enova" would show you everything we sponsored through Command Prompt, because I know Alvaro is good about putting that information in there.
>>
>> Bruce and Tom are typically who produce the release notes. So they're
>> in the best position to respond to how much time this would take to
>> collect.
>
> I am sure I could collect the information.  The big question for me is
> whether we _want_ such information in the release notes.  The release
> notes, for me, is for people to read about the release changes, and give
> a small amount of credit to the author, and indicate who is mostly
> responsible for the features, in case it has problems.
>
> I think adding sponsors to the release notes is going to make the
> release notes look like a billboard, and I am not in favor of this.

+1.

Littering the release notes with this will make them *less* useful for
their primary use-case, which is to find out what changed.

I'd be more in favor of adding a complete separate section with
"sponsors for this release". (yeah, it can go as a subchapter to
release notes, but not interspaced with the rest of the info)

> Obviously we don't even care to update the web site about sponsorships,
> so why put in everyone's face in the release notes when we don't even do
> the minimal of updating our own web site with this information.

Keeping the actual sponsor page on the website properly up to date
would be a good start. Maybe if we did that, the complaints wouldn't
show up...

--
 Magnus Hagander
 Me: http://www.hagander.net/
 Work: http://www.redpill-linpro.com/