Resolving Code Origin, Attribution, and Access Permissions

[RandomDSdevel]

@BjarneStroustrup:

N. b.: This issue is a fork of discussion started in #1 meant to prompt resolution of some issues described and/or encountered throughout the course of its history. Additionally, references to 'the original author' or similar statements refer to @BjarneStroustrup. Similarly, references to 'a third party' or similar statements refer to myself, @RandomDSdevel.

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Problem Statement

     As initially mentioned here, the resolution of #1 of this repository's issues has led to the creation of a range of additional problems. To summarize, they are as follows:

• Due to some unforeseen (if not accidental…?) events in its history (described further below in this bullet item's second sub–bullet item for the sake of preserving historical accuracy,) the code stored in this repository:
  • Lacks proper attribution to its original author, particularly within the relevant commit history.
  • Retains misleading, distracting, and/or superfluous commit artifacts over and above those those involving actual code modification and/or maintenance which originate from and are related only to a third party's efforts to upload a copy of the original codebase downloaded from its original home on the original author's personal web site to GitHub in order to improve its overall visibility and reusability.
• The third party has, due to a mistake on the part of this code's original author, become one of this repository's maintainers in a manner not supported by GitHub. (Specifically:
  • The former's GitHub account has been granted what one might interpret as root-/maintainer-level access to at least this repository, if not the entirety of the original author's GitHub account, thereby entangling the permissions of the former user's GitHub account with those of the latter in a wholly unsupported fashion.)

Suggested Resolution(s)

     The third party submitting this issue recommends that this repository's contents' original author consider adopting the second of the two alternative resolutions proposed below if the commit manipulation involved in adopting the first of them becomes too arduous. Otherwise, the former individual suggests that this repository's contents' original author assess the logistical plausibility of adopting that first alternative resolution. The referenced alternative resolutions follow directly below.

Alternative One

1. Have this repository's contents' original author revoke the involved third party's accidentally gained maintainer privileges, thereby disassociating their two accounts and clarifying to GitHub that this repository is not jointly owned by both individuals. Consequently, performing this operation would also:
   A. Remove this upstream repository from the list of repositories that GitHub recognizes as owned by the third party.
   B. Revoke the third party's access to internal details of this repository's contents' original author's GitHub account to which the former should most definitely not have access.
2. Have the repository's contents' original author rework this repository's commit history to:
   A. Squash all of the commits currently comprising it into a single commit.
   B. Reattribute the resulting commit to himself. (Note that he could also change the author listed in at least one of the currently existing commit's commit messages before squashing them if he so chose.)
3. Have the repository's contents' original author return to allowing third parties, including the one mentioned within this issue, to contribute to this repository by either and/or both of the following methods:
   A. Creating a GitHub organization and transferring this repository's ownership to it, then giving responsible individuals' accounts membership in it, thus granting them the permissions and rights associated with the role(s) which it would grant these accounts.^*
   B. Allowing non-maintainers to submit pull requests for maintainers to merge into the repository at their discretion.

Alternative Two

1. Have this repository's contents' original author perform step 1 as listed under 'Alternative One' above.
2. Have this repository's contents' original author delete this repository altogether, thus ensuring complete and utter removal of any artifacts that might inadvertently remain within GitHub's user and repository databases after he performed step 1 of this alternative, and reconstruct a fresh duplicate of it from his original codebase under either his own user account or a new GitHub organization as recommended in the third step listed under 'Alternative One' above.
3. Have this repository's contents' original author perform step 3 as listed under 'Alternative One' above.

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Footnote

^*Please note that the third party submitting this issue does not consider this a well-advised direction for his future involvement in this project's evolution, if any, due to his lack of programming experience.