Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261648AbVEVU3X (ORCPT ); Sun, 22 May 2005 16:29:23 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261688AbVEVU3X (ORCPT ); Sun, 22 May 2005 16:29:23 -0400 Received: from fire.osdl.org ([65.172.181.4]:29375 "EHLO smtp.osdl.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S261648AbVEVU3Q (ORCPT ); Sun, 22 May 2005 16:29:16 -0400 Date: Sun, 22 May 2005 13:31:11 -0700 (PDT) From: Linus Torvalds To: Russell King cc: Arjan van de Ven , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: When we detect that a 16550 was in fact part of a NatSemi SuperIO chip In-Reply-To: <20050522200344.B9854@flint.arm.linux.org.uk> Message-ID: References: <200505220008.j4M08uE9025378@hera.kernel.org> <1116763033.19183.14.camel@localhost.localdomain> <1116785646.6285.24.camel@laptopd505.fenrus.org> <20050522194438.A9854@flint.arm.linux.org.uk> <1116787877.6285.26.camel@laptopd505.fenrus.org> <20050522200344.B9854@flint.arm.linux.org.uk> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1635 Lines: 40 On Sun, 22 May 2005, Russell King wrote: > > Therefore, I put forward that this thing which appears to be called > "author" does not reflect authorship, but who submitted it. It _is_ supposed to reflect authorship, but it does so within the context of the SCM, not in any other larger context. In git, "author:" is a fairly descriptive TAG, nothing more. Don't get hung up about technicalities. If the field said frog: Arjan van de Ven that wouldn't mean that Arjan would have been magically transformed into a frog in the real world sense, would it? The fact that the field says "author:" does not mean that the person named is necessarily the "author" in the _copyright_ sense, it only means that he is the author in the limited sense that "git" gives it. And in the limited "git" sense, it's really an educated guess, aka "we're tryign to give credit where credit is due". The fact is, trying to be technical about single words in human language and thinking that that a meaning in one specific context carries over to some other usage of a word in another context is simply not true. Not here, not _anywhere_. And btw, lawyers and judges aren't idiots either. They're human beings, and they can tell the difference between two contexts. Trying to argue some silly technicality with a judge is not likely to get you very far in general. Linus - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/