Subject: Re: bug#9847: [PATCH 3/3] maint: use gnulib's gitlog-to-changelog instead of a ChangeLog file.

From: "Gary V. Vaughan" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2011 21:36:14 +0700

[[Cc: Karl and Jim as they are involved in the other discussion too.]]

Hi Bob, Peter,

On 1 Nov 2011, at 21:14, Bob Friesenhahn wrote:
> On Mon, 31 Oct 2011, Peter Rosin wrote:
>> 
>> Sorry for the late response, but *all* relevant info from the ChangeLog is
>> generally *not* included in the git commit message. E.g. commit 72266fce
>> "docs: improve description of -no-undefined." where the mention of
>> co-author Matěj Týč is thrown out the window by this change.
> 
> Loss of this sort of information is indeed a significant concern since the FSF "publishes" the software (with each FSF package being registered with the US copyright office) and the ChangeLog file is a formal part of that publication.  Submission of changesets into a shared repository is unlikely to constitute legal publication in most countries.  The FSF needs to keep track of every contributor in order to be able to defend the package's copyright status.

Strongly agreed, and apologies for not thinking of that myself.

While suffering from patchy Internet and electricity due to the severe flooding in Bangkok right now, I used the time to write some patches to remedy this issue at source:

  http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnulib/2011-11/msg00007.html
  http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnulib/2011-11/msg00008.html

Please direct further comment to one or other of those threads where the right people will see them.

Cheers,
-- 
Gary V. Vaughan (gary AT gnu DOT org)