[Foundation-l] Proposed revised attribution language

[Jussi-Ville Heiskanen]

Erik Moeller wrote:
> 2009/3/11 Bence Damokos <bdamokos at gmail.com>:
>   
>> From an attribution point of view, the definition of "full list of authors"
>> that excludes very small contributions is not really acceptable to me.
>> Imagine, that Joe only corrects spelling mistakes: arguably very small
>> contributions - you wouldn't say he is the author of the articles. Now
>> imagine, that you would print a hundred articles that Joe has corrected, and
>> you omit his name from the list of authors - for he has minor contributions.
>> I think Joe would be a bit upset that he is not credited, even though
>> without his small contributions the articles would be unpublishable.
>>     
>
> I think a distinction needs to be made between an aggregate of small
> changes, or a single small change. I'm not sure this distinction needs
> to be made more explicitly in this language, though: if someone has
> made an aggregate of small changes, they have arguably not made "very
> small or irrelevant" contributions to an article.
>   
"Arguably" is not the standard you want to satisfy realistically,
though, but "understandably" and "clearly" is, when you are
giving language for people who want to do real world stuff,
and aren't necessarily lawyers themselves.


Yours,

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen