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If the goal is to fix something to be able to put kernel contributor on your resume with a mediocre contribution in order to achieve yet another goal then that's not a good reason to be credited for the code, especially if it isn't your work that makes it into the kernelSomeone's desire to put "kernel contributor" on their resume is immaterial to the appropriateness of receiving that badge. "Mediocre" is a judgement you're projecting here, but we don't have evidence that the code was mediocre. And even if it was mediocre, most software goes through iterations, the first of which is almost always a mess. If the code he wrote was directly responsible for the code the maintainer wrote, there's a case to be made that credit is still due even if not a single line of the original code made it into the codebase.
"You didn't type the exact line of characters that made it into GitHub so therefore you did not contribute" is a very limited view of the whole series of interactions and investment of human capital that ultimately led to the fix.
> But the motivation isn't clean and if you care more about the credit than you do about the fix then clearly you have your priorities mixed up
This is projection again. When you don't receive credit for your work and get upset about it, it does not imply that the only reason you did something was for the recognition. If you get passed up for a promotion at work because a coworker lied and took credit for your work, you're allowed to be pissed about that, and it doesn't mean that you don't deserve a promotion because you worked hard to get a promotion. I don't get the logic here at all.
I agree that if the only reason someone contributes is to play a status game, that can lead to some questionable behaviors. But there's no evidence that this is the case here.
> No, the value of FOSS is the ability to read and modify the source code.
There is no singular attribute that makes up the "value of FOSS". Reading and modifying source code are valuable, but not exclusive to FOSS. The shared value of contributed fixes is also a major benefit of FOSS. FOSS is many things.
> This person did not contribute as of now.
I cannot imagine how you could conclude that the author did not contribute. If your definition of contribution is limited to "lines of text checked into a repo", perhaps you're correct, but this is an extremely limited view and incomplete picture of the nature of open source contribution.
The bug was around for many years. Would the code that did make it into the kernel have been written in the same timeframe if the author had not submitted their own solution?
There could have been many very good reasons not to include the author's code, and I'm not arguing against that. But it seems extremely disingenuous to claim that the author did not contribute quite a bit to this fix.