
Show HN: Bot that mentions potential reviewers on pull requests - vjeux
https://github.com/facebook/mention-bot
======
rtomayko
I've always loved this idea.

Fun fact: a blame-based suggested reviewers UI was included in the original
Pull Request design mockups. We shipped with a much weaker list of everyone
with write access list and eventually dropped the list altogether due to it
not being very useful. I've always wished we would have revisited the blame
based approach instead. A seemingly small feature that could dramatically
improve communication and reduce noise.

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jaredmcateer
Crucible essentially does this as well, when you create a review it will
suggest reviewers based on commit history to the file. Sometimes handy,
sometimes the bane of my coworkers life since he created the repo and migrated
the 12 year old code base from svn repository, so he's defacto the default
suggestion for any file that hasn't been touched in the last 2 years.

~~~
j_s
As someone in a similar boat, this is a reminder to remember to switch to a
bot account when doing this type of setup work.

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irremediable
Neat idea! I'm not on any large repos, but I can see how this would be useful.

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Amorymeltzer
How (or why) is Facebook claiming this is (or will be) patented?
[https://github.com/facebook/mention-
bot/blob/master/PATENTS](https://github.com/facebook/mention-
bot/blob/master/PATENTS)

~~~
vjeux
This post has more information on what the patent grant is:
[https://code.facebook.com/posts/1639473982937255/updating-
ou...](https://code.facebook.com/posts/1639473982937255/updating-our-open-
source-patent-grant/)

~~~
kuschku
Where would I have to ask to get legally binding information on the specific
patents for this bot?

I am definitely not going to use its source (due to licensing issues with
Facebook already), but if there is even a tiny chance that the idea is
patented, I won’t touch it either.

~~~
comex
I could be wrong and IANAL, but I doubt you'll be able to get lawyers for
Facebook to spend time on request to figure out which patents might cover a
particular piece of code - especially since I think telling you there aren't
any might let you claim estoppel in the (extremely unlikely) case they
actually wanted to sue you.

But you can get a list of Facebook's patents here:

[http://stks.freshpatents.com/Facebook-Inc-
nm1.php](http://stks.freshpatents.com/Facebook-Inc-nm1.php)

edit: Of course, just because they're including patent boilerplate doesn't
mean anyone actually did this research in the first place or believes that a
particular patent covers it; I would be surprised if someone had, as opposed
it just being standard boilerplate (although it doesn't seem to be on all
their projects). There's little reason to worry more about patents on this
project than on any other open source project distributed under a BSD license,
without an "additional" grant of patent rights. Not none, but little.

~~~
kuschku
Well, I distrust this kind of software patents in general, and (this violates
Facebook’s patent grant) think most of them are invalid, including many which
Facebook owns.

So, as I directly and openly violate their grant, I’d prefer to make sure that
their patents either (a) don’t apply in Germany, or (b) are invalid, or (c)
they don’t actually have patented a specific kind of idea.

~~~
kelrien
Sadly it is next to impossible to get a patent for software in germany. It has
to interface with some kind of hardware (like an engine control software in a
car or plane). A bot or something similar that only runs on a computer can't
be patented in germany.

I am german myself and work on a research project and we tested some software
on our participants and they loved it. So we thought about protecting our idea
/ software.

For that reason we attended a talk held by multiple patent lawyers specialised
in germany law and all of them said the same: "It can't be done without a
hardware interface".

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Hello71
so it's basically get_maintainer.pl sans usable MAINTAINERS file?

