Re: [bug-inetutils] regarding "Reported by ..." in ChangeLog

[Simon Josefsson]

address@hidden (Alfred M. Szmidt) writes:

>    I normally use "Reported by" when _I_ wrote something based on a
>    report from someone (and I wanted to give credit to the reporter).
>    This style is used by gnulib, coreutils and other projects.  What
>    would you recommend instead of "Reported by" for that situation?
>    None of the above styles seems appropriate to me, as it would then
>    look like the reporter wrote the patch (be it tiny or not).
>
> In that case, I would mention them in THANKS.  The main reason for the
> "name field" in the ChangeLog is for copyright reasons.  If a person
> only reported a bug, they have no claim to copyright over the patch.

Right.  If we put "Reported by foo" in the comment describing the
change, the "name field" would still accurately describe who the
copyright holder is.  The reporter should preferrably get acknowledged
in THANKS as well.  However, I believe it is useful to have the name of
the reporter in the ChangeLog too, to follow why someone did something.

>    I'm not sure if some of my ChangeLog entries are the ones you are
>    thinking of or not...
>
> I wasn't thinking of anyone in particular, or anything in particular.
> I've used it in the past as well. :-)

It seems to be in wide use in many GNU projects.  The Emacs mode for
ChangeLog recognize the expression and shows "Reported by" in different
colour.  The Emacs ChangeLog file also seems to be sprinkled with the
idiom.

/Simon