[Mageia-dev] Contributors using real name/working email? or not? or maybe?

Thu Mar 3 15:29:42 CET 2011

Romain d'Alverny wrote:
+> The points to decide here are:
+>  a) should a contributor provide a public email address, to be used in
+> changelogs, commits and everywhere her contribution to the project
+> needs an id or contact id? (for instance changelog, commit, document
+> authoring)
+>  b) should a contributor provide a real name for the same goals? or is
+> a fake name/alias ok, as long as there are people that do know/meet
+> the person?
+>   
+I think that there must be a way for anyone using the package or reading
+the spec or code to be able to contact the contributor.  So, yes, I
+would say there must be an email address, although it need not be a
+personal one (perhaps one provided by mageia).  If it is spammed, it can
+be changed throughout code, specs, and changelogs in an automated way.
+
+I see no reason to require a contributor to provide a real name.  They
+should be welcome to do so if they want public recognition (or for any
+other reason), but if they don't, that's fine.  If someone needs to
+establish their contributions to a third party, that can be done by
+having the third party send mail to the published email address and get
+a reply that is obviously from that contributor.  As far as
+accountability for behavior, nothing stops anyone from joining the MLs
+and trolling, and what works for non-contributors doing this should work
+as well for contributors.  As far as quality of contributions goes, bad
+or disruptive work will be recognized and can be checked or screened by
+an alias as well as a real name.  As far as malicious contributions go,
+such people are unlikely to provide a true name anyway.
+