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

Maarten Vanraes maarten.vanraes at gmail.com
Thu Mar 3 21:43:25 CET 2011


Op donderdag 03 maart 2011 15:00:01 schreef 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

I think we need to have a name and email address. however, some options:


A. possibly "cn" could be editable in identity
==> this will allow people to fill in what they want, be it full name, 
nickname, or full name AND nickname

cn could then be used as the name field


B. an email address is required IMHO, and preferably a @mageia.org email 
address

however, if people wouldn't want to have their email address listed, an extra 
option is this:

C. how about we make <packagename>@packages.mageia.org, which could use the 
maintainers database to forward the email to maintainers (in case of more) 
(this could also be a packagegroup. eg: firefox at packages.mageia.org could refer 
to maintainers of firefox, xulrunner, etc...) (this option might just be too 
complex)

D. if people really want to use their own personal email address, perhaps one 
can be opted-in to use that one. (but this should be decided in a policy and 
be strict on it either YES/NO)


personally, i like:
A, B, C, but vote NO for D.

i would like to use "AL13N <alien at mageia.org>" being used. my real name is 
kind of not linked the the email address.



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