Re: proposal: add "packagers" field (list of strings (names)) to package definition

[Andy Wingo]

On Tue 01 Dec 2015 08:12, Florian Paul Schmidt <address@hidden> writes:

> ...and encourage its use. The intended semantics is to list people
> that have contributed to the packaging effort. The motivation behind
> this proposal is that in many free software projects attribution can
> be a major source of motivation to get people involved. Having the
> packagers be first class citizens in the package definitions (as
> opposed to the information being only implicitly available through
> e.g. "git blame") would allow things like "guix package" or the
> package list on the website to display the contributor's names.

Since you ask for opinions, -1 from me :)

Currently Guix packages are more-or-less collectively owned.
Introducing this field implies to me an introduction of ownership of
packages.  Ownership has a number of negative effects: it can inhibit
casual fixes and it can introduce unnecessary conflicts.

The kind of ego-based positive feedback that having a maintainer field
would introduce is negative IMO.  It is good if people feel attached to
Guix-the-project and GuixSD-the-software-distribution, and to a degree
they get that by copyright, git blame, and NEWS.  Feeling attached to a
particular package is not as useful for the project or the distribution.

IMO :)

Andy