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There are typically multiple ways to write code to address a given issue. They might differ in aesthetics (including clarity of intend), but also performance,
by guenthert 3y ago
There are typically multiple ways to write code to address a given issue. They might differ in aesthetics (including clarity of intend), but also performance, maintainability, extensibility and robustness. It's not uncommon that those who wrote the code to be fixed rewrite the patch in order to improve on aforementioned properties while avoiding lengthy back-and-forth when asking for improvement of the patch. They are often in a better position to do so due to familiarity with the code, it's history and (unwritten) development path.
That is by no means plagiarism. If not communicated clearly, can however lead to disappointment of those who submitted the patch. An 'inspired-by' comment would have been nice.
- fleshdaddy 3y agoYeah it just seems like a bad strategy on the maintainers part. Seems like one of those perfect places to teach a new contributor style guides and make them more useful in the future. To me approaching it this way comes off as disinterest in welcoming new contributors, which maybe now they’re not needed, but being so unwelcoming could one day leave us with no one capable of maintaining these projects.
- foldr 3y agoIt is plagiarism by definition if you don’t give credit to the person who wrote the original patch. Paraphrasing a source without citing it is certainly considered plagiarism in non-programming contexts (even if you think that you improved the prose style).
- jacquesm 3y agoA patch, by definition is a modification of an existing piece of code, in this case a very small one. Now, it is possible that copyright protection would apply to such a small piece of code in that context but plagiarism usually does not involve a perfect record (the mailing list where the patch was submitted) that states exactly where the original work was submitted, what was done to it to make it ready for inclusion as well as an admonishment that the patch was not usable because it wasn't properly signed off. Plagiarism means that the kernel maintainer included the code and pretended that it was their original creation and nothing of the sort happened so I don't think that word should be used in this context. Nobody doubts the OP wrote the code, nobody is saying that they did not and nobody passes it off as their own.
- foldr 3y agoMisrepresenting your level of reliance on a particular source is plagiarism, and is uncontroversially recognized as such in any other context. If I say that I was inspired to study a particular problem by Paper X, but don't mention that my own paper includes several copied paragraphs of Paper X that I've lightly edited, then that is plagiarism. If there is a public record that makes it obvious that you've plagiarised, then that doesn't mean you're not guilty of plagiarism. It just means you failed to cover your tracks. None of this has anything to do with copyright. Not all plagiarism involves copyright violations and not all copyright violations are instances of plagiarism.
- jacquesm 3y agoWell, for me the bar for plagiarism is apparently higher than for you, for me it is 'passing something off as your own' and that never happened here. I'm open to other definitions that I'm not currently aware of.
- foldr 3y agoThe commit log and associated metadata misrepresent the authorship of the code. I am using the bar that you can find by googling 'plagiarism policy' and reading any number of documents explaining what constitutes plagiarism in an academic context. Plagiarism is not a crime, so the kernel maintainers can choose to decide that it's socially acceptable in the context of kernel development if they want to.