Re: MODULE_MAINTAINER

[Adrian Bunk]

On Thu, Apr 26, 2007 at 08:41:43AM -0700, Randy Dunlap wrote:
> On Thu, 26 Apr 2007 15:54:26 +0200 Adrian Bunk wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, Apr 26, 2007 at 12:41:41PM +0200, Rene Herman wrote:
> > > On 04/26/2007 03:18 AM, Andrew Morton wrote:
> > >
> > >> On Mon, 23 Apr 2007 14:32:36 +0200 Rene Herman <rene.herman@xxxxxxxxx>
> > >> wrote:
> > >>> Provide MODULE_MAINTAINER() as a convenient place to stick a name and
> > >>> email address both for drivers having multiple (current and
> > >>> non-current) authors and for when someone who wants to maintain a
> > >>> driver isn't so much an author.
> > >
> > > [ snip ]
> > >
> > >> I'm not sure we want to do this - that's what ./MAINTAINERS is for and we
> > >> end up having to maintain the same info in two places.
> > >
> > > joe@user:~$ less ./MAINTAINERS
> > > ./MAINTAINERS: No such file or directory
> > >
> > > MAINTAINERS is a developers thing, not users, yet a maintainer is someone 
> > > who other than by developers wants to be contacted by users of a particular 
> > > driver. Right now, a module exports a set of name and email addresses 
> > > through the MODULE_AUTHOR tag but given multiple current and non-current 
> > > authors, completely or largely orphaned drivers (I have a lot of junk PC 
> > > hardware so I come across those relatively often) and people who might be 
> > > interested in taking care of a driver but who do not consider themselves an 
> > > author for (upto now) having done a s/, struct pt_regs// on it, that tag 
> > > only confuses the issue of whom to contact.
> > >
> > > And it in fact even does so when Joe does know about a MAINTAINERS file and 
> > > does happen to have a kernel source tree lying around somewhere. With one 
> > > set of addresses displayed prominently inside the sourcecode of the very 
> > > driver and another one of in a MAINTAINERS file, the first one wins. Joe 
> > > would have to be very new to Linux to trust something in the tree that's 
> > > not actually compiled over something that is.
> > >
> > > As the first response in this thread Cristoph Hellwig stated that 
> > > MODULE_AUTHOR serves no purpose other than what MODULE_MAINTAINER would be 
> > > serving. Others agreed and Adrian Bunk suggested deleting MODULE_AUTHOR 
> > > outright.
> > >
> > > That would actually also serve my purposes; if there's no MODULE_AUTHOR 
> > > confusing the issue, I don't so much need a MODULE_MAINTAINER to fix it 
> > > again. I believe having "modinfo" (optionally!) display a contact address 
> > > for a driver might be a user advantage, but with all the wrong addresses 
> > > gone, I don't really care deeply; MODULE_AUTHOR doesn't serve the purpose 
> > > today and with it gone the user at least knows he needs to look elsewhere. 
> > > MODULE_AUTHOR is also a credits issue but the information can be 
> > > transferred to copyright headers. It would obviously also fix any possible 
> > > maintenance issues.
> > >
> > > Alan Cox believes that having author information embedded in the module 
> > > serves a legal purpose though and objects to removal.
> 
> Wouldn't a /* comment */ satisfy AUTHOR needs?
> 
> It gives deserved attribution and should serve legal purpose just as
> well as a macro does (IANAL!).

Alan's opinion in [1] sounds reasonable (and I trust that he knows what 
he is talking about).

> IMO we want MAINTAINER info in the macro and in modinfo,
> so I'm for removing MODULE_AUTHOR and just having MAINTAINER.
>...

I don't think we want to expose maintainership information to users at 
all:
- duplicates information in MAINTAINERS
- maintainers sometimes disappear
- the 3 year old kernel of your distribution would contain 3 year old
  maintainership information

IMHO the default should be that users report problems with distribution 
kernels to their distribution and problems with ftp.kernel.org kernels 
to either linux-kernel or the kernel Bugzilla.

> ~Randy

cu
Adrian

[1] http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/4/4/260

-- 

       "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
        of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
       "Only a promise," Lao Er said.
                                       Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed

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