Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Roland McGrath


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. No secondary sources about McGrath.  K rakatoa    K atie   21:00, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Roland McGrath

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Lacks reliable independent secondary sources to establish notability as required by WP:GNG. Googling suggests they don't exist. Sources offered are all WP:PRIMARY or otherwise unsuitable. Msnicki (talk) 14:29, 7 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep He's one of the original authors of three programs (GNU Make, the GNU C Library, and GNU Hurd) that have WP articles, and are evidently notable. He's listed as an author of the manuals for all three. Richard Stallman cites him as the author of the GNU C library in Stallman's essay published in |Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution. I added a reference to article to the LWN.net article about utrace, citing McGrath as developer. It's a real article written by LWN staff, not a reprinted mail message. There are four such articles:, , , and . I believe that's significant coverage in a reliable source independent of the subject.  --Jimblandy (talk) 01:48, 8 July 2013 (UTC)


 * No one (or at least, not me) disputes that he did the work but notability isn't WP:INHERITED. Even if some of his programs are notable, that doesn't mean he is automatically notable.  It's not sufficient to argue he should be notable because, after all, look at what he wrote.  The only question at AfD is whether there are WP:INDEPENDENT WP:RELIABLE WP:SECONDARY sources to establish that he's notable as required by WP:GNG.  The sources you've cited are insufficient.  Stallman is the leader of the FSF and of the GNU project and isn't independent.  The other citations you've offered are basically blog posts (what we call an WP:SPS) and, as such, can't qualify as reliable because there's no editorial control.  Different editors may interpret the guidelines somewhat differently but the usual gold standard for establishing notability is a couple thousand-word articles about the subject in recognized publications with reputations for fact-checking and editorial control by authors with no connection to the subject.  We don't have that here.  Msnicki (talk) 00:00, 10 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Re WP:INHERITED: I've read that, and I don't think I'm making one of those arguments. If three books are notable, surely the author of those books is notable. The rules for WP:BAND say that the appearance a band's music in a country's top lists makes the band notable. Oughtn't a similar relation hold for software?


 * Re LWN: Blogs can have the sorts of editorial standards that matter here, and I believe Linux Weekly News does. LWN is one of the most reliable sources of news for people following the technical development of the Linux kernel. Jimblandy (talk) 02:02, 12 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Computing-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 02:41, 8 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Software-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 02:41, 8 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 02:41, 8 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Mark Arsten (talk) 18:00, 15 July 2013 (UTC)




 * If McGrath is notable, it would be because of the software he has written; he is not a major author or researcher. Wikipedia's policies for creative professionals (WP:CREATIVE) answer the question directly, requiring that significant or well-known works confer notability on their creator (assuming one agrees that programmers are creative professionals); this is not an WP:INHERITED issue. To be clear: most significant or well-known software has many contributors (as does McGrath's), and not all those contributors are notable. However, McGrath is recognized as the original or primary author of the projects mentioned. Jimblandy (talk) 04:29, 20 July 2013 (UTC)


 * It's not enough under WP:CREATIVE that the subject is the original author of any of his works. It also requires,  the work be "a significant or well-known work, or collective body of work, that has been the subject of an independent book or feature-length film, or of multiple independent periodical articles or reviews" or that it has either "(a) has become a significant monument, (b) has been a substantial part of a significant exhibition, (c) has won significant critical attention, or (d) is represented within the permanent collections of several notable galleries or museums."'  There's no way the GNU C lib or GNU Make qualifies (they're just copies of earlier works by others) and he only just worked on the other stuff.  Msnicki (talk) 07:53, 20 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, czar   &middot;   &middot;  08:22, 23 July 2013 (UTC)




 * GNU Make is not merely a derivative of the original Make. GNU Make is often considered the canonical modern version of Make. When people choose to cite Make at all, they often cite GNU Make. For example:
 * Topic of thesis by Ludwig Hähne, Empirical Comparison of SCons and GNU Make, Großer Beleg (which I understand to mean "Bachelor's thesis"), Technical University Dresden.
 * Cited by Stephan Douglas Craven, Structured Approach to Dynamic Computing Application Development, PhD. thesis, Virginia Polytechnic Institute.
 * Cited by Joshi, Kakade, Trivedi, [NODE LISTING BASED GLOBAL DATA FLOW ANALYSIS http://freya.cs.uiuc.edu/~rujoshi/bereport.pdf], Bachelor of Engineering Project Report, University of Pune.
 * Cited by Rohan Drape, Rule-following, Precompositional Environments, Master of Arts Thesis, La Trobe University.
 * Cited by Stephan Thesing, Standard-und Programmiertools für UNIX, not sure what kind of document this is, but the author was a student at Universität des Saarlandes when he published it. Jimblandy (talk) 21:20, 25 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Delete - The discussion as above cites pretty much everything why the article should not be maintained, subject is not notable and notability is not inherit, making an important software or a bunch of them does not confer notability, also there is a requirement in the academic field for having an article, which subject does not meet as well. Eduemoni</b><sup style='color:green'>↑talk↓ </b> 20:36, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Please avoid repeating arguments. As explained above, inheritance is not claimed. The only plausible basis for notability is WP:CREATIVE, which establishes that the creator of works meeting certain criteria is notable. It's reasonable to argue whether his work meets those criteria, but you haven't presented any reasons. If you feel that the GNU C Library and GNU Make page and section should also be deleted, then certainly McGrath's page should go as well; but let's hear those arguments. Jimblandy (talk) 02:22, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

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 * Let me try to summarize the points of disagreement here:
 * Can a programmer's work confer notability? If not, then we agree McGrath is not notable. But I think it should, for the same reason that an author's works, a band's songs, or a composer's pieces confer notability on their creator. People find the creators of artifacts that are of great significance to them interesting. This is the essence of WP:CREATIVE.
 * Is McGrath's work, in fact, sufficiently valuable? If not, then we agree McGrath is not notable. Here there is more room for debate. Msnicki points out that both GNU C Library and GNU Make are expansions of prior work, and thus considers them not to meet WP:CREATIVE's criteria. I think his work is sufficiently notable. They are widely used. They are cited by scholarly works. And they have Wikipedia articles (or, in the case of GNU Make, a section). Jimblandy (talk) 22:51, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, The Bushranger One ping only 07:42, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

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 * Keep. The subject passes WP:CREATIVE, criterion 3: he has a significant body of work and is coauthor of a number of well-known works.   Sławomir Biały  (talk) 12:47, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * That section requires the work must have "been the subject of an independent book or feature-length film, or of multiple independent periodical articles or reviews." How-to books don't count.  What sources do you rely on?  Msnicki (talk) 13:25, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Is it your contention that GNU Make, the GNU C Library, and the GNU Hurd have not been the subject of independent reviews? I just took this as given, but I am willing to argue against that point if you really want to hang your hat on it.   Sławomir Biały  (talk) 13:28, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes. There are lots of how-to books about using the GNU tools but these are not reviews.  What WP:CREATIVE asks is that the work is of such import that it has spawned serious discussion of the subject's ideas and influence.  That's not satisfied by a regurgitation of the syntax for Make.  Msnicki (talk) 13:53, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Your narrow view of WP:CREATIVE would exclude things like reference books about the subject (of which there are a number), a position I'm not sure I agree with. But even accepting this viewpoint, there are many many reviews of GNU tools available.  Here is a review of GNU Hurd published in an ACM journal.  Linux journal has a review from 1994.  These references just scratch the surface.   Sławomir Biały  (talk) 14:48, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * The subject worked on Hurd. He didn't write the thing.  It's doubtful the article even mentions his name.  (No, I'm not buying the article to find out.  But you can, if you think it'll prove me wrong.)  And the Linux Journal article isn't a review, it's a how-to article in largely how-to journal.  That's why the title is, "Introduction to the GNU C Library".  Msnicki (talk) 15:18, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, there are entire books written on GNU Make: e.g., "GNU Make Unleashed".  Sławomir Biały  (talk) 16:08, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * And how much does it have to say about Roland McGrath? Click the link for "how-to".   At best, these sources establish notability of GNU Make.  Just because the subject wrote something notable doesn't make him notable; that's not what WP:CREATIVE intended or they'd have said it.   Msnicki (talk) 16:24, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * He's a principal coauthor of GNU Make and the GNU C Library, with rms, and also one of the principal architects of GNU Hurd. The WP:CREATIVE policy states: "The person has created, or played a major role in co-creating, a significant or well-known work, or collective body of work, that has been the subject of an independent book or feature-length film, or of multiple independent periodical articles or reviews."  This is obviously the case.  There is no provision that books like "GNU Make Unleashed" are disqualified, nor of the review article "Introduction to the GNU C Library".  The GNU Hurd article I already referenced is also an independent review (others are available to choose from, e.g., Jerry Epplin, "Inside Debian Hurd", Dr Dobb's Journal of Software Tools, 25(12):21-26, December 2000).  Entire books on Glibc include "GLIBC: A Comprehensive Reference to GNU/LINUX libC" published by MacMillan and "GNU C Library Application Fundamentals" published by the FSF, and "Glibc: a comprehensive reference to GNU/Linux libC" (by Jeff Garzik) published by New Riders Publishing (2000).  O'Reilly has a book "Managing Projects with GNU Make".  These clearly point to the significance of the subject's collective body of work, and the requirements of WP:CREATIVE#3 quoted above are amply met.  I'm not sure where you get the idea that WP:CREATIVE didn't say that a subject isn't notable if his collective body of work is significant&mdash;that's precisely what it says.   Sławomir Biały  (talk) 23:14, 2 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Delete Unable to find even one reliable source with significant coverage of Roland McGrath. I'm not swayed by the WP:CREATIVE arguments made by and . ~KvnG 06:07, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.