[Mesa-dev] Requiring a full author name when contributing to mesa?

[Ian Romanick]

On 12/11/19 2:27 PM, Timothy Arceri wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> So it seems lately we have been increasingly merging patches with made
> up names, or single names etc [1]. The latest submitted patch has the
> name Icecream95. This seems wrong to me from a point of keeping up the
> integrity of the project. I'm not a legal expert but it doesn't seem
> ideal to be amassing commits with these type of author tags from that
> point of view either.
> 
> Is it just me or do others agree we should at least require a proper
> name on the commits (as fake as that may be also)? Seems like a low bar
> to me.

First we don't allow single Unicode characters or emojis, and now you
want to require realistic looking names.  Where does it end, Tim?!?
WHERE DOES IT END???

🤣

But seriously... I definitely agree with the sentiment.  It seems really
lame to have a bunch of commits from clearly nonsense names.  Who are
these randos?  Where's the accountability?

As far as any possible legal aspects go, since we don't require (as far
as I'm aware) submitters to sign any sort of certificate of origin, I
don't know that Icecream95 is any better or worse than Ralphio Grant (a
realistic looking name that I just made up) or Ian Romanck.

It seems to me that this is a social problem, so it likely has a social
solution.  If we don't want people to be anonymous cowards with clearly
phony names, we should try to make the alternatives of being involved in
the community and using a real name more attractive.  We should do our
best to encourage people to "do the right thing."

I don't think it's very realistic for us to try to compel people to do
so, and I don't think there's much value in it... especially if it
drives away people making technically competent contributions.

> [1]
> https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/merge_requests/3050#note_361924
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