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

[Frank Griffin]

Romain d'Alverny wrote:
> 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 think that there must be a way for anyone using the package or reading
the spec or code to be able to contact the contributor.  So, yes, I
would say there must be an email address, although it need not be a
personal one (perhaps one provided by mageia).  If it is spammed, it can
be changed throughout code, specs, and changelogs in an automated way.

I see no reason to require a contributor to provide a real name.  They
should be welcome to do so if they want public recognition (or for any
other reason), but if they don't, that's fine.  If someone needs to
establish their contributions to a third party, that can be done by
having the third party send mail to the published email address and get
a reply that is obviously from that contributor.  As far as
accountability for behavior, nothing stops anyone from joining the MLs
and trolling, and what works for non-contributors doing this should work
as well for contributors.  As far as quality of contributions goes, bad
or disruptive work will be recognized and can be checked or screened by
an alias as well as a real name.  As far as malicious contributions go,
such people are unlikely to provide a true name anyway.