-- Gilles Peskine Mbed TLS developer On 20/09/2020 23:41, Gilles Peskine via mbed-tls wrote: > Hello, > > The Mbed TLS team is soliciting feedback on a proposed change of our > contributor acknowledgement policy. > > Background: our current policy is to acknowledge all contributors who > are not Arm employees in the ChangeLog files. This is a tradition that > dates back from when the version control history of Mbed TLS (then > PolarSSL) was not public. > > Proposed change: the ChangeLog file will no longer mention who > contributed a patch (“Contributed by …”). A patch will require a > ChangeLog entry only if it makes a user-visible changes, regardless of > who contributed it. We will still credit reporters in the ChangeLog > file, at least for security issues. > > Rationale: the ChangeLog file had a dual purpose: informing users, and > acknowledging contributors. It will now have the single purpose of > informing users. There are better ways of acknowledging contributors > nowadays: the Git history is public, and your contributions are visible > from your GitHub profile. (Note that we don't squash commits, and > attempt to preserve authorship as much as possible when we have to > rebase a patch.) Furthermore, writing a good ChangeLog entry often turns > out to require some back-and-forth, so lessening this requirement will > make it easier to accept contributions and to merge them faster (this is > in fact our primary motivation for the change). > > We are also thinking of creating an acknowledgement page out-of-tree. It > isn't clear yet what its scope would be, but it would include > acknowledging contributions in the form of reviews, which we wish to > encourage. (Please stay tuned for future announcements and discussions > regarding the Mbed TLS review process.) > > Question to potential contributors, or people who have participated in > other open-source projects: do you think that there is any value in > keeping acknowledgements in a file that is distributed with Mbed TLS? Is > there any value in maintaining an exhaustive list of contributors in a > form other than the Git history? > > Best regards, >