Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2026 13:20:00 -0400
From: Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us>
To: Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>
Cc: Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>,
	=?utf-8?Q?=C3=81lvaro?= Herrera <alvherre@kurilemu.de>,
	Peter Geoghegan <pg@bowt.ie>, Andrey Borodin <x4mmm@yandex-team.ru>,
	PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: PG 19 release notes and authors
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On Mon, Apr  6, 2026 at 01:05:18PM -0400, Robert Haas wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 6, 2026 at 12:41 PM Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> wrote:
> > Uh, the original wiki text is from a discussion on
> > pgsql-private-committers@lists.postgresql.org with subject "determining
> > the primary author of a commit" that happened around November 2024 to
> > March 2025.  Unfortunatly there is no public archive of that
> > discussion.
> 
> Sure, but many committers who were part of that discussion have
> commented on this thread, and all of them except for you seem to agree
> on what should happen here, as do all of the people who have commented
> who were not party to that discussion. If you had started out this
> conversation by saying "when there are both Author and Co-authored-by
> tags, how am I supposed to credit that in the release notes?" and
> accepted the answer you got back, I don't think anybody would be
> annoyed. But now you're getting frustrated responses from a bunch of
> people because you keep insisting that it must be everyone else who is
> mistaken: you keep suggesting that I (and all the other committers who
> have commented) misunderstood the earlier thread and the rules for
> commit messages, rather than concluding that you might have been the
> one who misunderstood.

I am frustrated because I thought we had a rule agreed upon in January
2025, and now I am told I was wrong.  At the time, some committers did
say they wanted my interpretation, and I want to honor them in trying to
stand up for their old messages in this thread.  Personally, I don't
care what the rules are.

What I don't want to do is to religitate this again, and usually if we
ignore what people said in the past, they will show up at some later
time to try to undo what we are doing now.

> It is fair to say that you need to know what the rules are, but I
> really don't understand how it could be any more clear at this point
> what people expect to have happen.

I am confused how this was not clear in the January 2025 discussion and
why people didn't mention they didn't like it then.  I can't quote
anything from anyone but myself from a private email, so here is some
text by me to you:

	I started using Co-Author as a way to indicate that the Co-Author
	wrote some of the patch, but I modified it enough that I don't want
	to attribute/blame the work entirely on the Co-Author.	Are you
	saying when that happens, I should name myself also as a Co-Author?

I am now thinking it is the wiki page text that was unclear because it
makes no mention of the release notes, which is why no one complained at
the time.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>        https://momjian.us
  EDB                                      https://enterprisedb.com

  Do not let urgent matters crowd out time for investment in the future.