Anonymous contributions

Boudewijn Rempt boud at kde.org
Tue Apr 16 09:14:31 BST 2019


There's another, related thing. We've got a "full name" checking git hook which tries to force commits to have "real names". 

This hook is, of course, broken: no software developer can ever make a check for names that's not brokenm because there _are no rules for names_. This check thinks that a full need needs to have two parts separated by a space: a first name and a surname. This assumption is untrue for instance for many Tamil people. 

See https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/ for an incomplete list of wrong-headed assumptions about names.

On donderdag 11 april 2019 19:24:15 CEST Nate Graham wrote:
> Hello everyone,
> 
> I've seen the subject of anonymous contributions come up more and more lately as we have a few contributors who are not comfortable providing their real full name. This convention seems rather at odds with the Privacy goal that the KDE community has adopted, and I can think of a few reasons why it could be reasonable for an open-source contributor to not want to use their real name:
> - Having been stalked online
> - Being a protestor or political dissident who might be targeted by their government
> - Career protection due to negative employer attitudes about open-source software
> 
> Being somewhat new here, let me ask the question: what's the historical reason behind why we ask contributors to provide their full names? And do we think it's still necessary going forward, or are there alternative means we can employ to arrive at the same ends?
> 
> 
> Nate
> 
> 


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