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From: Peter Geoghegan <[email protected]>
To: Bruce Momjian <[email protected]>
Cc: Andrey Borodin <[email protected]>
Cc: PostgreSQL-development <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: PG 19 release notes and authors
Date: Sat, 4 Apr 2026 22:29:15 -0400
Message-ID: <CAH2-Wzk2okKGYEPjypnMZ+NMZHq5oz6etpxL9U-na7RwznKKvw@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <[email protected]>
References: <[email protected]>
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On Sat, Apr 4, 2026 at 10:13 PM Bruce Momjian <[email protected]> wrote:
> Yes, that was the original purpose.

I didn't actually know that. That's likely my own fault. (OTOH I
haven't actually used the new tag at all, at least not yet.)

> Basically, if a commit has no
> "Author" tag, the committer is assumed to be the author.  If there is an
> "Author" tag, the committer is not assumed to be the author.  If there
> is an Author tag and the committer wants author credit, they must add
> their name as an author.  If the committer wants to indicate they
> changed the patch, and potentially added bugs, but doesn't want credit,
> the wiki says to use Co-authored-by.

Got it. That makes sense to me (obviously, since I already said that
that's the only policy that could possibly be useful).

> > What I'm saying here boils down to this: I don't think it's sensible
> > to expect the use of a specific tag variant (or even the order in
> > which author names appear) to convey much useful information. I really
> > hope nobody reads too much into my choices in this area.
>
> Well, I don't care what we decide, but we should decide something.  You
> can say they don't convey information, but I need to put something in
> the release notes, so they are forced to have some effect.

I think that Co-authored-by should either: 1. have a specific
mechanical purpose (like affecting how the release notes are written),
OR 2. not exist at all.

What's the point, otherwise? It just doesn't make sense to have a
Co-authored-by that merely conveys a general vibe. These things are
inherently squishy and subjective. Pretending otherwise would be a
mistake (to be clear I'm not suggesting that you or anybody else has
made that mistake).

-- 
Peter Geoghegan

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