[Python-Dev] Distutils ML wrap-up: setup.cfg new format (original) (raw)

Brett Cannon brett at python.org
Wed Sep 23 07:39:04 CEST 2009

On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 20:55, David Lyon <david.lyon at preisshare.net> wrote:

Hello Guido,

Isn't it clear from Tarek's email that he is summarizing distutils-sig? Well, I'm new to this. Summarising is a word that could be certainly applied. Isn't it odd that you ask this question pointing to your own message? It's not odd at all. When I see my ideas, which Tarek originally argued against, published with his name on them, and my name left out, I just felt it fair to myself to ask him how that might have happened. Are you worried that you won't get credit for the idea (assuming it's yours)? As I said, I'm new. I've been very happy to help out. This is all a learning process for me. I can accept whatever decision Tarek makes on distutils and the direction of the code. If he chose to ignore my postings and go a different way from what I suggested then that is his perogative. If the failing was on my part to not fully write up PEPS and do full examples, and diagrams and so forth, then I accept that. Should you perhaps just ask for credit instead of asking a rhetorical question? I don't really believe that the work is complete enough for anybody to claim credit for just yet. That's why I was surprised to see the announcement. Hence me asking about it. In all fairness, I'm trying to help Tarek here. And the python packaging effort. Getting my name on what I believe are my contributions shouldn't be such a big deal and I'm very sure you'd agree on that. But it is an ongoing struggle for whatever reason that I've been having. I'm sure your guidance can resolve the issues easily..

If you re-read Tarek's email is uses "we" throughout the entire discussion, only using "I" when referring to the email itself. I don't think anyone on python-dev thought that it was exclusively Tarek's idea or necessarily even mostly his. Personally I just attribute the idea to the distutils-SIG and don't think beyond that.

If you want explicit credit, you can co-author a PEP or get thanked in a checkin as you mentioned. But honestly, from my observations of open source, ideas are not what get you noticed, it's producing something tangible like code. Plus ideas and such pull from so many people on mailing lists you can claim you came up with the initial idea, but I am sure a ton of people provided feedback which makes ownership of any idea practically moot. Trust me, if you are doing open source for anything other than altruistic reasons you are bound to be disappointed.

-Brett

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