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Credit and Free Software

Posted by michael on from the where-it's-due dept.

Hans Reiser - you're thinking ReiserFS, and you'd be right - has a proposal to slather Free Software with credits for its authors. Good? Bad? This is something the community has generally moved away from, but maybe Reiser has a good point. Newsforge is part of OSDN.

3 of 208 comments (clear)

  1. That would explain it... by Steffen · · Score: 3, Informative

    Here, go read:

    a fairly unpleasant thread started by Mr. Reiser himself.

    He has a point, but surely it doesn't hurt to be slightly less aggressive on these matters. Unless he enjoys being credited as an asshole...

    1. Re:That would explain it... by shallot · · Score: 3, Informative

      Actually, that's the fragment of the thread from the (entirely offtopic) debian-testing mailing list. Here's the full thread on the debian-devel mailing list.

  2. my POV by FooMasterZero · · Score: 3, Informative
    I personally think this is silly really, and I have one piece of OSS under my belt. I do use a splash screen however it is easily turned off and all it does is show the product name, no different than Mozilla's splash screen. Credits about me or any other contributers are contained in the respectable 'About" screen of my application.

    Personally I feel credit is given to me in various ways.

    1. Downloads counts stay fairly consistent and gradually seem to be rising.
    2. Occasional email saying that they like it or even better sometimes coupled witha request for new feature or bug.
    3. Simply doing a google of my project shows sites all over the place.
    I figure people who give me credit on their own free will, by performing their own reviews and such good or bad, that certainly helps me to make better software and that is all i really want to do anyhow. It is diifcult enough to write something unique and useful these days and on top of that stand out in the mix of commerical apps. So people who have contributed to the linux kernal have obivous unspoken credit that they know companies like RedHat are using thier work, likewise with mozilla developers one being funded by AOL to some extent as wellas being used in AOL's software, to me that is credit and prestige that is pretty rare for most of the OSS projects out there.

    One day I hope to see my stuff being reused elsewhere, and as long as they just say it somewhere that i helped out, I couldn't ask for more.