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

[Chuck Atkins]

>
> My 2 cents, which take with a grain of salt given that I'm an "every once
in a while" contributor...


This seems wrong to me from a point of keeping up the integrity of the
> project.


I understand the sentiment of project professionalism, but also keep in
mind that not every contributor is a professional.  That definitely doesn't
devalue their contribution and is part of what makes a community driven
open source project.


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.


I would caution against having such a policy that may inadvertently send
the wrong message of "We only want 'real' software developers so if that's
not you then your contribution isn't really welcome."  I don't believe
that's your intent here and it might seem like a stretch but I think a
policy could come across that way or at least have that sentiment if not
worded carefully.


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.


I personally think it's okay to have "anonymous" contributions with the
only real issue being copyright assignment, which (not a lawyer here
but...) I think could be reasonably addressed through a policy of
"anonymous contributors agree to assign copyright of contributed code to
the project itself" or something of the sort. That's really a topic for
it's own discussion though.

- Chuck
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