What is the origin of __author__?
My guess is, it's from the old times when packaging meta data was not common then.In PEP 8 one is encouraged to use the __version__ top level variable to hold the revision id of the versioning system in use. This dates back to 2001-05-01. PEP 396 is superseding this for module __version__ attributes.
For __author__ there is a post from the python dev mailing list, concerning this matter. This one dates back to 2001-03-01. The author questions the use of __author__: "What's next ? __cute_signoff__ ?".
Since there is no mention in the PEPs, we don't have to worry about __author__. Packaging metadata is our friend anyway.
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-March/013328.html
Ping just checked in this:> Log Message:> Add __author__ and __credits__ variables.> > > Index: tokenize.py> ===================================================================> RCS file: /cvsroot/python/python/dist/src/Lib/tokenize.py,v> retrieving revision 1.19> retrieving revision 1.20> diff -C2 -r1.19 -r1.20> *** tokenize.py 2001/03/01 04:27:19 1.19> --- tokenize.py 2001/03/01 13:56:40 1.20> ***************> *** 10,14 ****> it produces COMMENT tokens for comments and gives type OP for all operators."""> > ! __version__ = "Ka-Ping Yee, 26 October 1997; patched, GvR 3/30/98"> > import string, re> --- 10,15 ----> it produces COMMENT tokens for comments and gives type OP for all operators."""> > ! __author__ = 'Ka-Ping Yee '> ! __credits__ = 'first version, 26 October 1997; patched, GvR 3/30/98'> > import string, reI'm slightly uncomfortable with the __credits__ variable insertedhere. First of all, __credits__ doesn't really describe theinformation given. Second, doesn't this info belong in the CVShistory? I'm not for including random extracts of a module's historyin the source code -- this is more likely than not to become out ofdate. (E.g. from the CVS log it's not clear why my contributiondeserves a mention while Tim's doesn't -- it looks like Tim probablyspent a lot more time thinking about it than I did.)Anothor source of discomfort is that there's absolutely no standardfor this kind of meta-data variables. We've got __version__, and Ibelieve we once agreed on that (in 1994 or so :-). But __author__?__credits__? What next -- __cute_signoff__?