[Mageia-dev] Contributors using real name/working email? or not? or maybe?

[Romain d'Alverny]

Hi there,

in the past few days/hours, on sysadmin list has a discussion arisen
about publishing packager email into commit/change log; you can check
the whole thread, here are three starting points of it:

 * https://mageia.org/pipermail/mageia-sysadm/2011-March/002946.html
 * https://mageia.org/pipermail/mageia-sysadm/2011-March/002952.html
 * https://mageia.org/pipermail/mageia-sysadm/2011-March/002955.html

And you would perhaps like to read the whole thread; not everyone
agrees there. The discussion slipped to whether:
 * packagers/contributors [sh|w]ould use & publish their real name (as
registered in identity),
 * packagers/contributors [sh|w]ould publish their contact email (same),
 * in their contributions to the project (here, in the changelog),
 * if it should be strictly enforced or not, and why.

for practical or personal reasons. It's a general, pretty key matter,
it's been rightly suggested to raise the point here, so here it is.

We can't enforce anything unless we decide on this first and this
thread is here to gather views. What we (Council) will decide later on
about this depends on the outcomes of the discussion (and if we ever
decide or not btw). It will be part of the project's privacy policy.

And please try to keep this discussion to the point, focused and
civilized; state your views, don't infer on others' ones, stay cool.
Or your point will become shallow and the discussion will be wasted.

The points to decide here are:
 a) should a contributor provide a public email address, to be used in
changelogs, commits and everywhere her contribution to the project
needs an id or contact id? (for instance changelog, commit, document
authoring)
 b) should a contributor provide a real name for the same goals? or is
a fake name/alias ok, as long as there are people that do know/meet
the person?

I won't comment on pros and cons below (not exclusive of others), but
those were raised in the discussion before:

The pros (as in "yes one should"):
 - that is the common way used in MDV and other major distributions
 - (email or name) it identifies the author of a change to the project/code
 - (email) it helps identifying & contacting directly someone in the
project (peer review or any ad hoc matter)
 - (email & name) it helps building confidence among contributors and
from the outside
 - (name) it encourages people to adopt a consistent behaviour
 - (email & name) it builds one's contributions list for
future/outside reference

The cons (as in "no, one should be free not to")
 - public email addresses get spammed
 - personal preferences to not reveal one's name
 - there are situations where anonymity is a requirement or "nice to
have" (from a personal or corporate point of view)
 - it will encourage people to contact directly contributors instead
of using other expected channels

Note that one may use a fake name/identity anyway to stay anonymous
(but unless one already has a network of trust within a group, she
would not have a past public record to help building her new
reputation).

What is at stake is the accountability for each contributor, hence for
the whole project. What will matter is what one does and how.

And again, let's have this point discussed in a cool, informative,
constructive and efficient way, please.

Cheers,

Romain