List of Authors in aboutdata.cpp

[Laurent Montel]

Hi,
Thanks for looking it.
Indeed it’s wierd that we added email from people which never made commits.

Indeed this dialog box is very big as there is a lot of people.

I am agree that we need to reduce it (Perhaps we can add a specific file in 
repo to move name of people which made less than x commits.

+1 for your idea.
Regards

On dimanche 22 août 2021 00:07:57 CEST David Bryant wrote:
> 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.


-- 
Laurent Montel | laurent.montel at kdab.com | KDE/Qt Senior Software Engineer 
KDAB (France) S.A.S., a KDAB Group company
Tel: France +33 (0)4 90 84 08 53, http://www.kdab.fr
KDAB - The Qt, C++ and OpenGL Experts