Patch to overwrite real node author

taxonomy_node_get_terms_by_vocabulary() will load the previously saved taxonomy terms for the node, not the ones set on the current submit.

This code will also display warnings in PHP's strict mode because there might not be an item 0 in the authors array.

Coding style errors:
* Form element titles should be sentence case.
* t() items should be in double quotes if they contain single quotes (and don't contain double ones).
* Indentation should follow Drupal code style standards.

This line doesn't do anything:
$node->nid = $node->nid;

You probably shouldn't re-implement the term parsing from taxonomy.module. I can come up with about three cases off the top of my head where your parser would work differently than the built-in one.

It's much easier and safer to do the following:

      $copy = drupal_clone($node);
      taxonomy_node_save($node->nid, $node->taxonomy);
      $copy->taxonomy = _my_module_get_terms($node->nid);

Where _my_module_get_terms is implemented as:

/**
 * Retrieve the terms for the given node ID.
 *
 * @param $nid int
 *  The node ID to get terms for.
 *
 * @return array
 *  The term objects for the given node ID.
 */
function _my_module_get_terms($nid) {
  $result = db_query('SELECT tid FROM {term_node} WHERE nid = %d', $nid);
  $tids   = array();
  $terms  = array();
  
  while ($row = db_fetch_array($result)) {
    $tids[] = $row['tid'];
  }
  
  foreach ($tids as $tid) {
    $terms[$tid] = taxonomy_get_term($tid);
  }
  
  return $terms;
}

$copy->taxonomy will then be in the same format as when you node_load();

Also, the code still needs changes to comply with Drupal coding standards. Primarily, replace your tabs with two spaces each. Comments like "The following case added by sw9" are generally not part of patches.

Thanks for the work so far!

The problem with accessing $node->taxonomy before it's submitted is (I think) because the terms have not yet been ordered in terms of weight (or, failing weight, in alphabetical order). This results in the following strange behavior when free tagging is enabled:

1. Add author terms "Jane, Bill" in that order
2. Save the node. The overwritten author is "Jane."
3. Edit the node. Note that the terms are now in alpha order, which is what Drupal defaults to when weights are equivalent. The author terms now read "Bill, Jane" in that order.
4. Save the node. The overwritten author is now "Bill."

While you haven't actually changed any information, the overwritten author has changed because Drupal reorders the terms when the node is saved.

I'm working on implementing David's solution.

Regarding my earlier statement:

While you haven't actually changed any information, the overwritten author has changed because Drupal reorders the terms when the node is saved.

This may not be accurate. It's possible Drupal is reordering the terms when the node is loaded into the edit form, thus reordering the terms on the second save.

I've added this feature to the 5.x and 6.x versions. (It's very different than the patch originally submitted, but the result is the same.) Thanks for your input!