List of Authors in aboutdata.cpp

[David Bryant]

The "Help --> About KMail" widget currently shows 53 "Authors" and mentions 65 
more people in "Credits".

I went through the git log output and identified ~375 "Authors" (including a 
couple of "scriptys"). So roughly 1/3 of the people who have contributed code 
to Kmail are recognized explicitly in the Help credits. The "Credits and 
Licenses" section of the "Handbook" mentions 49 of the 53 "Authors" as being 
on the Development Team, and gives Credit to 7 more. The Documentation page 
mentions 17 people, about half of whom were previously mentioned as 
"Development Team". So the documentation credits ~65 people, only about half 
as many as "About".

I have researched the 53 people mentioned as "Authors" in the Help widget. I 
went through the git log to identify the date of the last contribution each 
person made, and the total number of commits authored by each one. Here are 
those statistics, in descending order by number of commits. I drew the 
statistics from the total commit history on gitlab from 1997 through June 30, 
2021. As a point of reference, there are 19,257 commits in the log file.

01. Laurent Montel, June 30, 2021, 8006
02. Thomas McGuire, Sep 10, 2011, 2344
03. Till Adam, Oct 13, 2012, 1617
04. Ingo Kloecker, May 14, 2021, 1017
05. Volker Krause, Jun 24, 2021, 911
06. Marc Mutz Aug 19, 2010, 900
07. Michael Haeckel, Nov 12, 2002, 818
08. Don Sanders, Aug 22, 2005, 648
09. Carsten Burghardt, Oct 6, 2006, 415
10. Stephan Kulow, Aug 20, 2008, 354
11. Andreas Gungl, Mar 25, 2007, 247
12. Karl-Heinz Zimmer, Nov 19, 2004, 203
13. David Faure, Oct 6, 2020, 195
14. Stefan Taferner, Feb 14, 2001, 189
15. Bo Thorsen, Nov17, 2004, 183
16. Zack Rusin, Apr 13, 2004, 127
17. Daniel Naber, Nov 10, 2003, 124
18. Waldo Bastian, Jun 16, 2004, 118
19. George Staikos, Apr 15, 2005, 113
20. Szymon Stefanek, Sep 2, 2009, 94
21. Markus Wuebben, Jan 16, 1999, 77
22. Aaron J. Seigo, Oct 6, 2014, 50
22. Matt Douhan, Jul 28, 2005, 50  (Tie for 22nd place.)
24. Carsten Pfeiffer, Oct 5, 2003, 43
25. Matthias Kalle Dalheimer, Aug 30, 2002, 33
26. Espen Sand, Jul 4, 2000, 30
27. Robert D. Williams, Jun 2, 2000, 26
28. Sven Radej, Mar 30, 2000, 25
29. Lars Knoll, Sep 17, 2002, 22
30. Kurt Granroth, Jun 26, 2002, 20
31. Jacek Stolarczyk, Nov 9, 2000, 16
32. Steffen Hansen, Jun 11, 2004, 12
33. Mario Weilguni, May 29, 2000, 10
33. Ryan Breen, Feb 7, 2003, 10  (Tie for 33rd place.)
35. Jason Stephenson, Mar 15, 2001, 8
36. Roberto S. Teixeira, Oct 23, 2003, 5
37. Denis Perchine, Dec 22, 2000, 4
38. Guillaume Laurent, Apr 19, 2001, 2
39. Igor Janssen, May 28, 2001, 1
39. Sam Magnuson, Mar 10, 2003, 1
39. Wolfgang Rohdewald, Dec 10, 2008, 1
39. Wynn Wilkes, Jan 11, 2002, 1 (4-way tie for 39th place.)
43. Christer Kaivo-oja, Mar 7,2001, 0
43. Cristi Dumitrescu, Apr 5, 2001, 0
43. J. Nick Koston, patches in 1999, 0
43. Mark Roberts, Sep 19, 2000, 0
43. Matt Johnston, Nov - Dec, 2000, 0
43. Matt Newell, Feb 23, 2001, 0
43. Philippe Fremy, 2001, 0
43. Ronen Tzur, Jan 4, 2002, 0
43. Samuel Penn, Jan 1, 2002, 0
43. Steven Brown, Mar 8, 2001, 0
43. Toyohiro Asukai, June 25, 2004, 0 (11-way tie for 43rd place.)

11 of the 53 "Authors" never made a single commit. They were all responsible 
for one or more patches committed by other people. One of the guys who made 
just one commit posted this commit message: "update my mail address". Which 
hardly seems like a major contribution to the program.

I'm just speculating now, but it seems likely that in the early days of KMail 
(say before 2005) anybody who authored a single commit was free to add his 
name to aboutdata.cpp. Somebody (Don Sanders?) eventually thought the list was 
getting too long and added the comment about only the maintainer updating the 
list. That effectively stopped the list from getting any longer. Notice that 
only 12 of the 53 "Authors" (23%) made any contributions in 2006 or later. But 
70% of the log history (as measured by number of lines) has been added since 
January 1, 2006. The early birds are getting the lion's share of the credit, 
and current contributors are getting the short end of the stick. And, in point 
of fact, only two of the 53 "Authors" (McGuire and Stefanek) made his first 
contribution to KMail after January 1, 2006. McGuire used to have Laurent's 
job. And Stefanek was some sort of superstar at the 2008 "Summer of Code", 
apparently.

Anyway, I'm hoping to stir up a little discussion here.  It seems to me we 
could very easily agree on some objective criterion for choosing the top 25 to 
35 authors, and restrict the list to just those few dozen who have made more 
than say 25 or 30 commits. That way we could recognize the newcomers as well 
as the old-timers. It might encourage more participation in the project.
-- 
David Bryant
Canyon Lake, Texas