Re: [gentoo-dev] [PATCH] glep-0076: Require real name instead of legal name

[Andrew Ammerlaan]

On 12/07/2022 13:47, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
>>>>>> On Tue, 12 Jul 2022, Michał Górny wrote:
>
>>>   to the commit message as a separate line.  The sign-off must contain
>>> -the committer's legal name as a natural person, i.e., the name that
>>> -would appear in a government issued document.
>>> +the committer's real name as a natural person, i.e., the name that
>>> +you would use to present yourself to your colleagues.
>
>> This is insensitive to people who don't have any colleagues.
>
> The snarkiness of Michał's comment left aside, in general "the name that
> you would use to present yourself to your colleagues" won't work. It is
> one of the examples in [1]:
>
> | 4. People have, at this point in time, one full name which they go by.
> | Not so, even in Western countries, where a woman may choose to retain
> | her unmarried name at work (where she is already known by that name),
> | and use her husband’s surname on social occasions, and even on legal
> | documents such as mortgages and loans.
>
> (IIRC, robbat2 had once pointed me to that document, in the context of
> a contributor from South India with a single-letter name.)
>
> Ulrich
>
> [1] https://shinesolutions.com/2018/01/08/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names-with-examples/

I think this is the third time we've had the "real name" vs "legal name" 
discussion. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. The "legal name" 
rule, as it is worded now, has no basis in reality. We do not enforce 
this, nor could we if we wanted to (unless of course we start requiring 
scans of e.g. drivers licenses before we accept contributions to Gentoo, 
which would be stupid). Truth is there is no way for any of us to know 
if the names we see and use in Gentoo are a persons "legal name".

Anna's wording is better, if only for the reason that it reflects 
reality better. In practice, all we actually do is apply our 
(unavoidably) biased 'common sense' to determine if some combination of 
symbols is, or could be, a "real name". And this is good enough because 
all we really need is some convenient semi-unique identifier to refer to 
a person in order to contact them, and to determine who is responsible 
for what. If "real name" is good enough for Linux why wouldn't it be 
good enough for us?

Best regards,
Andrew