[Mageia-sysadm] [RPM] cauldron core/release tagtool-0.12.3-2.mga1

[Romain d'Alverny]

On Thu, Mar 3, 2011 at 03:06, Tux99 <tux99-mga at uridium.org> wrote:
> Like I said previously, this discussion needs to be moved into the Mageia
> dev ML,

I will open a thread about this in the list - but you could have done too.

There are separate (related) issues in this:
 - anonymity/accountability: using real names or not (and this is not
related to privacy - privacy is about keeping facts, actions &
behaviour private -  keeping your identity hidden is anonymity)
 - identification of contributions: direct contact/id of a given
packager, from references to its contributions in the project (here a
changelog);
 - reachability: technical contact within the project (peer review for
instance) and/or from outside of the projects

> Apart from that, sure a user might have many wishes, but in a situation
> where the user is NOT a paying customer while the packager is a volunteer
> it should be the packager who decides how much of his time he contributes
> and privacy he is willing to give up, NOT the users every possible
> wishes!

Giving your name is not a loss of privacy. Giving an email address
contact is not a loss of privacy. And both do not encourage users to
spam you, they will more likely end up in a forum or on the general
list first.

> And finally if you simply change from the current situation to publishing
> the packagers name/surname/email WITHOUT PRIOR CONSENT of the packagers,
> Mageia would be in breach of european privacy laws, this has to be
> communicated to packagers first so they have a chance to either opt-out
> (worst case by stop being a packager if you leave them no other choice) or
> change their names to fake names.

We maybe can't force much, but we can encourage a best practice to be
put into action. Wishing/encouraging that people provide their real
name and a working/actionable public email contact is not in breach of
anything. And of course, such a thing would be notified (although it's
not a brutal change from previous practice, but for people

> Also there should be a possiblility for packagers to use a different email
> address for the changelog entries, not the same one in the mageia identity
> db,

Sure, but this email would need to be in the identity db nonetheless,
in a separate field. But the use case would need to be more detailed
for that to happen.

> I for example use a separate unique email address for every separate
> purpose, so I can very easily stop spam by blocking off one specific email
> address.

I guess we all do that. But considering your Mageia contributor email
address to be mostly a source of spam (hence, not reading it) is a
sure recipe for missing important info and contacts from within the
project. There making it harder to work together, within and outside
of the project.

>From my point of view, if one doesn't want to provide her real name
and/or a working public email contact, I wonder if she really
understand what the stakes are in contributing and collaborating
within a public open source project that aims to provide a trustable
platform to a significant number of people (and I wouldn't even
consider mentor her).

(no strong feeling, right? :) that's a discussion)

Romain