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

[Timothy Arceri]

On 13/12/19 1:54 am, Daniel Stone wrote:
> On Wed, 11 Dec 2019 at 22:35, Timothy Arceri <tarceri at itsqueeze.com> wrote:
>> 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.
> 
> What benefit does it bring?
> 
> Icecream95 could just resubmit as 'John Johnson'; would we just take
> that as face value that that was their 'real name' and accept the
> contribution?
> 
> I know someone in Australia who changed their name via deed poll to
> Stormy Wrathcauser (changed slightly to protect their privacy, but
> very close). Would we accept their contribution if they posted, or
> would we have to stop and take measures to verify that that was their
> real legal name?
> 
> What about Chinese contributors, who as noted in thread tend to use
> made-up non-legal pseudonyms anyway?
> 
> Unless we're actually trying to bring up and enforce a web of trust, I
> don't think there's any point in requiring that the submitter's name
> conforms to some notion of idealised naming - it's just window
> dressing. I also don't see any point in trying to enforce a web of
> trust. Debian's method of doing this involves a hundred people
> standing around in a room looking at drivers' licenses from countries
> they might not have even heard of before to verify identity. But I'm
> certainly not an expert at identifying whether or not a Bolivian
> drivers' license which is put in front of my face is forged or not,
> and suspect no-one on this list is.
> 
> If someone is determined to compromise the legal integrity of Mesa's
> codebase, requiring that they register as Juan Molinos or any other
> name which seems like it could be 'legitimate' is not really any
> barrier to entry.
> 

Hi Daniel,

I've already given my personal thoughts on all these questions in the 
various threads, ultimately I was just asking if we should use a little 
common sense here. If people don't want to apply this extremely low bar, 
then so be it. Let the contributions from atom symbols and inanimate 
objects flow in.