Enrico Zini, Mattia Rizzolo, Plagiarism & Debian
Linux distributions are particularly challenging when it comes to attribution of work. The package maintainers do very little work compared to the developers who created the software. Now we have the phenomena of Debian Developer titles for people who never developed anything at all and never will. They are put up on a pedestal to look down their noses at the real developers of upstream projects. Imagine groupies pretending that they are members of the band, despite not being able to play any instruments. The end user sees the identity of the distribution, such as Debian or Fedora, in a more prominent position than the names of real developers.
[...]Nonetheless, we have proven the first part of plagiarism: obfuscating the identities of real developers. The first time my name appears in Debian appears to be way back in 1998 in a bug report. The callous manner in which they disappear people is abhorrent.
In an earlier blog, I looked at this from the perspective of modern slavery in Debian. They gave us a promise of recognition in exchange for our contributions. Now they are bouncing the cheques.
The second half of the plagiarism case rests on the misattribution of our work to people who contributed less.
The strongest evidence of this misattribution is the Non-Uploading / Non-Developing Developer scheme. Under the scheme, the cabal can give a Debian Developer title to somebody who did not contribute any code at all. The implication is that these people can include the title Debian Developer when applying to speak at a conference or applying for membership of another group. It is a form of privilege escalation and plagiarism all in one.
The people who obtained these titles are asking to be given the same title and the same respect as those of us who really did author and donate code to the project.