List of Authors in aboutdata.cpp

[David Jarvie]

On 23 August 2021 09:54:21 BST, "Ingo Klöcker" <kloecker at kde.org> wrote:
> 
> For what it's worth, when I was maintainer of KMail in the early 2000s my rule 
> was to add anybody to the list of authors who made a non-trivial contribution. 
> One of my thoughts/hopes back then was that new contributors who are given 
> credits in the About dialog are motivated to stay longer and contribute more. 
> I think that a rule like "Your contributions are not worth adding your name to 
> the About dialog until you have made 25+ commits." will motivate nobody to 
> stay longer and make more contributions.

I agree. If you were to disregard people who made very few commits, you need first to evaluate *what* they committed. It's entirely possible that person A might have made 50 trivial commits, e.g. stylistic changes, whereas person B might have implemented a significant new feature in just one or two commits. On that basis, person A would have much less reason to be included in the list of authors than person B.

So, as Ingo says, no existing person should be removed from the authors list. But before adding more recent committers, if they haven't made a large number of commits, the content of their commits should perhaps be evaluated before including them.
--
David Jarvie
KAlarm author, KDE developer