Z:gnu-www-ja-funding-art-vs-funding-software--bd9b6c-If we wanted to give credit in/en

If we wanted to give credit in proportion to lines of code (or should it be characters?), then it would be straightforward, once we decide how to handle a line that was written by A and then changed by B. But that assumes each line as important as every other line. I am sure that is wrong&mdash;some pieces of the code do more important jobs and others less; some code is harder to write and other code is easier. But I see no way to quantify these distinctions, and the developers could argue about them forever. I might deserve some additional credit for having initially written the program, and certain others might deserve additional credit for having initially written certain later important additions, but I see no objective way to decide how much. I can't propose a justifiable rule for dividing up the popularity credit of a program like GNU Emacs.