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I used to think it was fine to take someone else's contribution and then create a total rewrite of it in my own branch and merge that. Or to go into someone's P
by ljm 3y ago
I used to think it was fine to take someone else's contribution and then create a total rewrite of it in my own branch and merge that. Or to go into someone's PR and push a rewrite into a new commit on Github. At least in the latter case there'll still be a contributor credit (`Co-Authored-By`), but someone had to do the same with me for me to realise that it kinda sucked and really soured the experience of being a contributor. In my case, it was that someone 'forked' my project by dumping the code into their own repo without any of the commit history.
As you say, even if the code was shite, the refactored fix that got merged in would never have existed without it. "I like my version better," feels pretty dismissive and regardless of any other fact I can see how anyone would feel a bit miffed about that after they put the work in.
Edit: the reply linking to the actual response from the maintainer invalidates my last sentence.
- nolist_policy 3y agoBut nobody said "Sorry, I like my version better. If you want to be a Linux kernel contributor, here’s an issue you could fix."! This[1] is what the maintainer (Michael) said. [1] https://lists.ozlabs.org/pipermail/linuxppc-dev/2022-June/244387.html https://lists.ozlabs.org/pipermail/linuxppc-dev/2022-June/24...
- Aurornis 3y agoThis is much more reasonable than the "paraphrased" reply in the blog post. I think it's somewhat dishonest that the blog author used the quotation feature in his blog post, but instead of including a quote he made up his own response as if the kernel maintainer said it. I barely noticed this parenthetical above the gigantic block quote: > He said (paraphrasing): Anyone reading the blog post too fast would assume the kernel maintainer actually said those dismissive words in the gigantic block quote.
- orra 3y agoYeah, the paraphrasing here is misleading. Ironically the topic is intellectual honesty.
- sshine 3y agoWhat's the big deal about misquoting here? The blog post author just liked his version better. ;-)
- tiagod 3y ago>Anyone reading the blog post too fast would assume the kernel maintainer actually said those dismissive words in the gigantic block quote. That's my case. I only know it was paraphrased because of this thread. The quote pulled my attention before I could finish the previous line.
- avgcorrection 3y agoYeah, and I might have felt a bit “blind” if it were not for you guys also having the same experience: I did not see that parenthetical at all, probably both on account of the linebreak right before it and the (as you say) huge blockquote.
- ljm 3y agoI would hope the author of the post corrects this, "I wanted to fix it differently" is not even close to "I like my version better." It's still a bit crap to not get proper credit, but it's not fair to put words into someone else's mouth either. The author isn't paraphrasing, he's sharing the story he's told himself after being upset.
- nolist_policy 3y agoAnd the maintainers reply already includes the proposed patch, with: > Reported-by: Ariel Miculas <...> Ariel could just have pressed "reply" in his email client and pointed this out if he felt wronged. But no, instead he is writing a blog post one year later misrepresenting the maintainer and the Linux project.
- dcow 3y agoI believe the implication is that this exchange happened in private.
- uranusjr 3y agoI have this done to me a lot and honestly don’t feel a thing. People don’t really care about other people’s coding styles anyway (except they all suck); the thing got done, everyone got credit. I guess everyone feels differently.