Re: [PATCH RFC] Character set support

["Eli Zaretskii" <eliz@is.elta.co.il>]

> Date: Fri, 20 Sep 2002 14:58:22 -0700
> From: Kevin Buettner <kevinb@redhat.com>
> 
> As I stated earlier, I think it's appropriate that the following form
> be used when non-trivial changes to the contributor's patch need to be
> made:
> 
>   YYYY-MM-DD  Committer  <committer@committer.org>
> 
>   	From Contributor <contributor@contributor.org>:
> 	* somefile (somefunction): Something was done.
> 
> OTOH, when a contributor's patch can be applied without change, I think
> it's appropriate to use the following form:
> 
>   YYYY-MM-DD  Contributor  <contributor@contributor.org>
> 
> 	* somefile (somefunction): Something was done.
> 
> I have consulted the GNU coding standard regarding this matter.  See:
> 
>     http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards_42.html#SEC42
> 
> According to this document, the header line says who made the change.
> I suppose we could interpret this to mean the committer of the change,
> but I think it's more meaningful to interpret this as the actual author
> of the change.

I agree with the last sentence and with the proposed forms.

However, please be aware of another aspect of these entries: the legal
aspect.  When you mention a name of a contributor in a "From" form
above, someone might understand that the contributor assigned
copyright for the changes to the FSF.  If that's not true (which
generally means the change is either very short or trivial), you
better not mention the name, lest someone like Richard Stallman looks
up that name in the FSF copyright list, fails to find it, and panics
thinking that parts of GDB's code come from an author who didn't
assign copyright.

> I've discussed this matter with Jim Blandy, and he suggested that the
> following form might be useful in some cases:
> 
>   YYYY-MM-DD  Contributor  <contributor@contributor.org>
> 
> 	Committed by Committer  <committer@committer.org>.
> 	* somefile (somefunction): Something was done.

I don't think it's a good idea: it invents a new form not used
anywhere in the GNU project, and Emacs won't highlight it correctly.
Emacs understands "From ...", "Patches by ...", "Reported by ...", and
"Suggested by ..." (with a few minor variations).  See add-log.el in
the Emacs distro.  I suggest that we stick to these forms.