Closed Bug 277119 Opened 20 years ago Closed 17 years ago

Firefox credits don't list all contributors

Categories

(mozilla.org :: Governance, task)

Product:
mozilla.org
Component:
Governance
Platform:
x86
All
Type:
task
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
major

Tracking

(Not tracked)

Status:
RESOLVED FIXED

People

(Reporter: BenB, Assigned: zak)

References

Details

It's a Firefox but, but because it's political, filing it here.

Reproduction:
1. Help | About Mozilla Firefox
2. Check Copyright
3. Click Credits

Actual results:
2. "@1998-2004 Contributors"
3. Lists a longer list of names, but many Mozilla contributors are not included.

Expected results:
2. "@1998-2004 Mozilla Contributors"
3. Lists all people who contributed code which ships in/with Firefox. I.e. the
list should be extended a lot.

Importance:
This is a legal requirement by the MPL. At the very least Initial Contributors
(everybody starting a new file) *must* be listed, otherwise it's a copyright
violation.
about:credits (about: -> contributors) has a longer list.
Right, but that's not where the UI goes to.
<quote src="http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/MPL-1.1.html#section-3.3">
You must include a prominent statement that the Modification is derived,
directly or indirectly, from Original Code provided by the Initial Developer and
including the name of the Initial Developer in (a) the Source Code, and (b) in
any notice in an Executable version or related documentation in which You
describe the origin or ownership of the Covered Code.
</quote>

(shorter:) "prominent statement ... including the name of the Initial Developer
... in any notice in an Executable ... in which You describe the origin or
ownership"



Related, but another issue is:
<quote src="http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/MPL-1.1.html#section-3.6">
You may distribute Covered Code in Executable form only if the requirements of
Sections 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4 and 3.5 have been met for that Covered Code, and if
You include a notice stating that the Source Code version of the Covered Code is
available under the terms of this License, including a description of how and
where You have fulfilled the obligations of Section 3.2. The notice must be
conspicuously included in any notice in an Executable version, related
documentation or collateral in which You describe recipients' rights relating to
the Covered Code.
</quote>
--> Governance
Assignee: mitchell → nobody
Component: Miscellaneous → Governance
QA Contact: mitchell → governance
Assignee: nobody → zak
QA Contact: governance → zak
Some quick comments:

First, there is a distinction between credits acknowledging individual developers and notifications regarding Initial Developers and/or Contributors. Initial Developers and Contributors are specifically the copyright holders for the code in question, and are not necessarily (or even typically) individual developers; the MPL-required notices would instead refer to Netscape, Sun, IBM, Google, the Mozilla Foundation, and so on -- whatever organization happened to employ the developers who actually wrote the code.

Given the above, there are actually two problems instead of one:

1. Fix the Firefox credits so as to properly acknowledge individual developers and others who made contributions. I'm not sure how best to do this. On the OX X version of Firefox 1.5 there is a "contributors" link in the current Firefox scrolling credits that goes to the full about:contributors page, but it's fairly hard to click on it while scrolling. (It also is not the correct information in context, as discussed below.) I don't think including the full about:contributors list in the scrolling credits would make sense, but at least it should be easier to get to.

2. Fix the Firefox credits to better fulfill the MPL requirements regarding Initial Developers and Contributors. This requires a different list that contains only copyright holders. Gerv is probably the best person to provide such a list (because it was needed for the relicensing effort). Note that this is actually the list that should be linked to from any "Copyright 19xx-20xx Contributors" text, not the about:contributors list.
Cc-ing myself, and cc-ing Gerv because I nominated him for a task :-)
zak: Please only change the assignee and not the QAContact when you are taking a bug. Many of us watch the QAContact for changes with Governance bugs, and by changing it, it causes bugmail to be lost and never seen. Thanks!
QA Contact: zak → governance
FYI, what I'm asking for is to put the list of Initial Developers and/or Mozilla developers at the current end of the scrolling list (before the note about US gov users) that you get when you click on About|Help|Credits. Very simple and IMHO very obvious change. And fair.

I do *not* think that a further indirection is OK. Having to click on a link at the very end of an already very long list would almost guarantee that nobody ever looks at it.

Re comment 5, Copyright holders vs. individual developers: I would be fine with a superset of that. (For all voluntary contributors, they are the same.)
I think there are two issues here:

1) What do we *have* to do to be in compliance with MPL section 3.3

2) What do we *want* to do to make sure that all contributors are fairly credited for their work?

I think it's important that we fix them separately. They can't really be fixed together, because a compilation of Initial Developers from the MPL licence blocks would be as unfair a reflection of contribution as any other partially-complete list - it would include the guy who contributed one written-from-scratch file, and not the guy who contributed 1000 bugfixes but never created a file.

So I think the right approach is to fix the MPL compliance, and then look at the whole question of appropriate credit separately. Without wanting to prejudge it, I think that those who are looking to have changes made in this area do have a case.

Anyway, on the topic of MPL compliance, let's break down section 3.3:

1)
> You must cause all Covered Code to which You contribute to contain a
> file documenting the changes You made to create that Covered Code and
> the date of any change. 

So this part is, frankly, a pain in the ass. :-| IMO (and IANAL), we sort of comply by saying that the CVS repository is the master copy of the current code, and you can get the entire thing via rsync, and if you do, you get files which document all the changes made and the dates they were made on. But it's not ideal.

Lesson for GPLv3 authors: specify ends, not means.

2)
> You must include a prominent statement that
> the Modification is derived, directly or indirectly, from Original
> Code provided by the Initial Developer and including the name of the
> Initial Developer 

OK, so we need to include such a statement. Where? In two places:

3)
> in (a) the Source Code, 

Well, that's OK, we do that, because it's in the licence header block.

4)
> and (b) in any notice in an
> Executable version or related documentation in which You describe the
> origin or ownership of the Covered Code.

So the point here is that the initial developer names need to be in the
same place as where we describe the origin or ownership of Covered Code.
And that's about:licence, where we have centralised all origin/ownership 
information.

So what I am proposing is a new section in about:licence, between
"Mozilla Public License" and "GNU General Public Licence", entitled "MPL
Original Developers". This is certainly a prominent position within "the notice where we describe origin or ownership" - it's right next to the licence to which it relates. 

That section would say something like this:

In accordance with MPL section 3.3, we state that this software is derived, directly or indirectly, from Original Code provided by: 
<list created by grepping the source>.

This seems to satisfy parts 2 and 4, and so bring us into compliance with the entire thing (with the caveats about 1).

I would repeat that this is about complying with the licence, not about giving appropriate and proportionate credit. The latter is something we should do, as fairly as we can, out of gratitude and without the need for legal whips.

Gerv

> > and (b) in any notice in an
> > Executable version or related documentation in which You describe the
> > origin or ownership of the Covered Code.

> So the point here is that the initial developer names need to be in the
> same place as where we describe the origin or ownership of Covered Code.
> And that's about:licence

I disagree here. Help|About or a list of developers *is* a "description of origin/ownership". Note the "any".

> giving appropriate and proportionate credit. The latter is something we
> should do, as fairly as we can, out of gratitude and without the need
> for legal whips.

Totally agreed.

But we don't have them so far, and if we had them, we wouldn't need to worry about MPL compliance, because the latter will most likely be solved with the former, too.

The only reason why I am asking for MPL compliance - or mentioned it in the first place - is to get some movement towards proper credits. Note that I wrote "*At the very least* Initial Contributors". For me, MPL is the means, fair credits the end of this bug ;-).
Ben, I understand your desire to use the requirements of the MPL as a way to force the credits list to be expanded. This approach may work for you, because a) you own the copyright to your contributed code, and b) you are an Initial Developer in MPL terms, i.e, you contributed one or more new source files, not just changes to existing files. The problem with that approach is that while it may work for you, it doesn't work for everybody, and therefore IMO is not a fair way to address the problem. Your approach doesn't address providing credit for people who were contributing code under a "work for hire" arrangements (e.g., anyone who worked for Netscape/AOL, Sun, IBM, Google, Oracle, etc., etc.), and also doesn't work for any volunteer contributors who contributed lots of bug fixes and enhancements to existing files, but didn't contribute any brand new source files.

So, as Gerv mentioned, we have to treat the problem of providing correct MPL notices separate from the problem of giving proper credit to individuals. From your comments above it appears that you think that it's  more important to give proper credit to individual contributors. That's fine, and we can discuss that; however let's not confuse the issue by talking about the MPL in this context.
OK, let's treat it separately if you want. So, this bug is *not* about adding a list of Initial Developers to credits (and never was intended as such). It's about adding all significant Mozilla contributors to the list.  Please forget my mention of the MPL, I only used it to point out the priority of this issue as a serious bug, not RFE, so that it doesn't get delayed any longer.
Blocks: 331136
I've filed bug 331597 on the MPL issue, proposing the fix I proposed here.

Gerv

Ben beat me to it. See bug 331597.

Gerv
My preference is just to remove the independent Firefox credits section and have the button link out to the web page. I will post a proposal to this effect to d-a-f this week. 
The current scheme allows localizers to give out credits to their contributors,
which covers that we have different folks to credit for different locales.
Can any of the participants here update the status of this bug?
Status: NEW → ASSIGNED
So, here's where this becomes a problem from my perspective (and I said as much
in the thread Ben started, though Ben didn't reply):

There are three sets of people we want to recognize (and there is significant
overlap here in places):

1) People who made significant contributions to the current app release (Help |
About) 

2) People who have made contributions to the project as a whole over the
last eight years (about:credits) 

3) Code contributors who must be acknowledged per the MPL terms (we've always 
just said "about:credits" but that's grossly inaccurate)

Group 1 often includes special thanks (i.e. PR/design firms, Mozillazine) that
don't fit into the individual contributors list.  It is also important, in my
opinion, to allow app teams the option of calling out specific contributors.  To
take Sunbird as an example, they have a pretty small list of people making that
app happen, and I think they should be able to identify their team, as long as
it is possible to easily access the larger lists of Group 2 and 3.  I don't
think this list should be taken under 3.3, since that talks about somewhere 
describing the origin or ownership of the code, of which the scrolling list makes
no mention.

Group 2, the current makeup for about:credits, isn't a good basis for compliance
either, since it likely includes people who wrote code that is no longer used or
existing anywhere in the tree, and wouldn't come up in any grep-based audit. 
Given that many people are on that list who don't have copyright over anything
in the code (or perhaps contributed app-specific code that has no relevance to
the app in question), and there is no delineation, we can't just say "here's the 
people who have copyright here" and be in compliance.  Its important to maintain 
the growing list of everyone who's contributed over the years, so I want to 
continue to have this.

Group 3, the list of people that the MPL specifically requires us to list as
copyright holders, is something we need to have, and somehow maintain
per-release and per-app, since someone who has only written code in Firefox bits
has no copyright over Thunderbird, and vice-versa.  Also, if I write code for 
Firefox 3, that does not give me retroactive rights on older releases.  Similarly,
the people in about:credits for their Bugzilla work don't hold copyright over 
code used in Firefox, just as Gecko hackers don't gain copyright over Bugzilla.

Group 3 seems like a hard problem to solve without some major work, is this Gerv's baby?

Given the problems here, as a stopgap, I'd like to propose the following:

* Change "Credits" to "Special Thanks" in the About dialog, to make it explicit 
  that it is about recognition rather than any implied ownership of code (if we 
  still had categories for Dev/QA/Marketing/etc this would be less important). 
  I'm already on the hook for maintaining this list, and I think its important 
  to continue calling out the people who make each release happen.

* Make sure the end of the scrolling list has a clear clickable link to about:credits
  with text that makes it clear that many people have contibuted over the years.

* Create an explicit list of MPL contributors to be compliant and list the real
  copyright holders (about:copyright?) and link to that from the copyright notice
  in the main panel.

This addresses all three groups fairly, IMO, and offers better compliance to the
MPL concerns than any of the suggestions put forward already.
Despite the intro, this bug is not about MPL compliance in any way. Group 3 is dealt with; see about:licence in a recent trunk build, and bug 331597. Ignore group 3, and forget all questions of MPL compliance.

All we have left is groups 1 and 2 - and, the specific question of whether group 1 should exist at all or not. You define group 1 as "People who made significant contributions to the current app release". 

In passing, I would note that today, the list in Help | About does not currently fit that criteria. As far as I know, despite us baving been through several releases, no names have ever been removed from it, and I can name several people on it who have not made a significant contribution to the current release. Also there is no process by which someone decides who a particular release's key contributors are and makes sure they are systematically added.

You present two reasons for the existence of group 1:

A) It allows credits for organisations rather than people
B) App teams should have the option of calling out specific contributors.

I think B) is debatable. We have no mechanism for a fair assessment to decide who has made a significant contribution to the current app release, and setting one up, defining criteria and managing the process would not be trivial - and take time away from actually making the release. Also, I can see it causing a lot of upset, as people were added and dropped from the list. "I did lots of work for this release!" "Yeah, but not as much as last time...". Someone would have to take the final decisions, and it wouldn't be pleasant.

What would happen in practice is what has happened in practice - the list just continues to grow, with no real policy about who gets on it, and it becomes a de facto newer version of about:credits with higher profile. And that in itself causes issues for contributors who aren't on it - hence this bug.

As for A, I see no reason why we couldn't start adding company or organisation names to about:credits if the company wished to be credited as a company rather than individuals.

I don't think anyone in the community is suffering from a lack of recognition which the Help | About list solves. And in a project this large and with so many diverse contributors and ways of contributing, the only egalitarian credits scheme is a list of all the names.

Gerv
(In reply to comment #19)
> You present two reasons for the existence of group 1:
> 
> A) It allows credits for organisations rather than people
> B) App teams should have the option of calling out specific contributors.
> 
> I think B) is debatable. We have no mechanism for a fair assessment to decide
> who has made a significant contribution to the current app release, and setting
> one up, defining criteria and managing the process would not be trivial - and
> take time away from actually making the release. Also, I can see it causing a
> lot of upset, as people were added and dropped from the list. "I did lots of
> work for this release!" "Yeah, but not as much as last time...". Someone would
> have to take the final decisions, and it wouldn't be pleasant.

Process is overkill here, sound judgement should be enough.  There is, of course, the risk of overlooking someone, but we do that already.  In any case, I don't think this has to be or even should be an organization-wide decision.  Just because someting isn't pleasant doesn't mean we can't do it.  Marking a bug WONTFIX even though someone already specified a feature and wrote the patch isn't pleasant either.

> What would happen in practice is what has happened in practice - the list just
> continues to grow, with no real policy about who gets on it, and it becomes a
> de facto newer version of about:credits with higher profile. And that in itself
> causes issues for contributors who aren't on it - hence this bug.

You're assuming no one is willing to step up and maintain that list.  I think I've made it clear in multiple places that I'm going to be doing this for Firefox, and while no one has taken the time to prune people who have moved on to other things, I am not afraid of changing that for the better.

> As for A, I see no reason why we couldn't start adding company or organisation
> names to about:credits if the company wished to be credited as a company rather
> than individuals.
> 
> I don't think anyone in the community is suffering from a lack of recognition
> which the Help | About list solves. And in a project this large and with so
> many diverse contributors and ways of contributing, the only egalitarian
> credits scheme is a list of all the names.

Why do we want to or should be egalitarian here?  Credit and prominence should be hand in hand with contributions, regardless of form.  Formal process and policy are doomed concepts here, we have to be willing to put faith in human judgement, just like we do with the rest of the app.  I may not be able to define a significant contribution, but I know it when I see it.

I want to continue to recognize people who've made significant recent contributions, because I think that we don't do a good enough job of that in this project on an ongoing basis.  Having a prominent section for thanks allows and even forces us to look back and take note of the people who helped us get there. Burying that in a big list that's basically self-populated at present means that we don't do that.
* Mike, are you still (doing|willing) to maintain the list? 
* Gerv, does this simple solution fit with you?
Sadly, this solution doesn't really fit with me; I've already been involved in two separate sets of discussions with people unhappy about the way the current list within Firefox has been handled.

We do need to figure out what to do, and I'm not sure how that process should go. I'm currently waiting for a reply to an email I sent to Mitchell, which might shed more light.

Gerv


I have been maintaining the list, see the changes to credits.xhtml on the 1.8 branch/trunk or in Firefox 2.

If there is feedback with people being unhappy, please share that and the rationale.  There will never be universal consensus on something like this, but we can try to respect all viewpoints.

For what its worth, I'm not happy with about:credits either, since there's a large number of people who should be listed as contributors who are not, because you have to ask to be recognized.  If we're going to discuss this, we should discuss it on mozilla.governance, since that has traffic and subscribers now.
Does anyone have an update on the state of affairs here? Are contributors more or less happy with the current list?
The agreed policy is as follows:

- about:credits will be a historical record of anyone who has made a sufficient qualifying contribution to the project; About box credits will be regenerated every major release by the owner of that product.

- The criteria for about:credits will be: "people who made a significant investment of time, with useful results, into Mozilla project-governed activities".

- The criteria for About boxes will be "people who made a significant contribution to making that particular release of that software happen".

- Both about:credits and the About box introductory text will be reviewed to make sure they reflect this distinction.

- People who get into the About box who also qualify for about:credits (which will not be all of them) may have their names copied across without seeking their permission.

- People may nominate themselves, or module owners and respected project contributors can nominate people, for about:credits; the about:credits maintainer does not have to seek the confirmation of the person concerned.

- About box credits will be regenerated by a process defined by the product owner. 

Gerv
Status: ASSIGNED → RESOLVED
Closed: 17 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
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