[maemo-developers] [maemo-developers] Requesting assistance concerning proper author credit at nseries.com/770experience_2/

[From: Aaron Levinson]

Frantisek brings up some good points, but I don't think they are relevant
in this case.  The original version that I started from was an ancient,
abandoned, GTK-based version of VNC viewer from 1999 by James Henstridge.  
He released two versions in 1999 and then abandoned the project.  I've
gone to his Web site, and he doesn't mention the project there.  It
appears that he isn't interested in public credit for the project.  
However, he is fully given credit in the relevant files in the source
package.  James also borrowed some include files from what was likely the
version of VNC that was out at the time, and he also borrowed a little
code from Samba (I tracked down the name of the author of the Samba code
and listed it in the AUTHORS file for the 0.3 version).  And, I imagine
that he examined the VNC source files when implementing things, but this
is not mentioned in his original package.

Technically, if this is really an issue, we should go through all the 
projects listed on the applications page and give credit to the original 
authors, if the application is a port (or rather, this is the duty of the 
individual who ports the software).

But, I think the main thing is to give credit where credit is due.  This 
is something that is common in the scientific community, where a single 
article might cite many more articles (there are other reasons for doing 
this, but one is to assign proper credit).  However, it doesn't seem to be 
done as rigorously in the software community.

Regards,
Aaron

On Wed, 22 Nov 2006, Frantisek Dufka wrote:

> I guess giving proper credit is tricky.
> 
> Even if Aaron's name is mentioned now at 
> http://nseries.com/770experience_2/hacks_vnc.htm isn't it still a bit 
> unfair for developers of original VNC(viewer) if their (probably big 
> chunk of) code was used? This was just an example, same issues can be 
> raised for other entries.
> 
> In similar way this slide gave me a laugh.
> http://www.linuxdevices.com/files/article073/sld008.html
> It was indeed very good idea from you guys by still it feels a bit funny 
> to me to attribute whole virtual memory system in linux to someone who 
> figured out how to run swapon command on n770 :-) I guess guys who wrote 
> swapping code in linux kernel could feel a bit like Aaron here.
> 
> Let's have patience with our managers and marketing people :-)
> 
> Frantisek
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