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

[Timothy Arceri]

On 13/12/19 10:15 am, Alex Deucher wrote:
> What does the name matter?  The name is the least of your worries.
> What if their patch uses a patented algorithm?  Does anyone check for
> that?  The whole Signed-off-by thing just just hazing for newbs.
> Someone took the time to write and submit a patch.  We trust they did
> the right thing and didn't do anything illegal. It's on the reviewers
> to determine if the patch is reasonable and should be applied.  The
> name is just window dressing.

Yes exactly the name is just window dressing, where a window dressing is 
"designed to create a favourable impression". In this case to make our 
project look competently and professionally run at a glance. I've been 
lucky enough to be employed to work on this project for around 5 years 
now, but don't expect this to last forever. Eventually I'd like to be 
able to point out to future employers the work I've been doing for all 
this time. Personally I'd like the window dressing to look nice when 
this time comes.

If other developers don't care which was my original question then I'll 
stop wasting my time requesting people not use such author names.


> 
> Alex
> 
> On Thu, Dec 12, 2019 at 5:42 PM Timothy Arceri <tarceri at itsqueeze.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> 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.
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