Re: [gentoo-project] call for agenda items -- council meeting 2019-04-14

[Alec Warner]

On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 2:17 AM Alice Ferrazzi <alicef@g.o> wrote:

> The 04/10/2019 07:59, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
> > >>>>> On Wed, 10 Apr 2019, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
> >
> > >>>>> On Tue, 09 Apr 2019, Gokturk Yuksek wrote:
> >
> > > I'd like to (informally) propose the following, for which I'm willing
> > > to formulate as a GLEP proposal if there is interest:
> >
> > > The Foundation has an established practice of storing the legal names
> > > of developers who join under a pseudonym. The infrastructure is
> > > already in place for this. I think that allowing these developers to
> > > commit using their pseudonyms as long as the Foundation is informed
> > > their real identity does not exacerbate the legal risks they already
> > > pose. The foundation may decide their arbitrary criteria on who is
> > > eligible for this type of protection, including requiring sound legal
> > > reasons for them to keep their identities hidden. I understand that
> > > the maintenance of this could be a burden for the Foundation in
> > > theory, but in practice I suspect this number is very low already.
> >
> > That doesn't work, because there would be no way for a person outside of
> > the Foundation to verify such identities.
> >
> There is no way also for foundation to check all sign-off are assigned
> to real legal names.
>

So these are two separate points. I don't quite understand Ulm's point but
it is different than the point you are raising.

Your point seems to be that somehow the "Foundation must be able to check
if all sign-offs are signed by a legal name." We already made it clear we
don't do this checking. That doesn't mean its OK to use an pseudonym (it is
not, and doing so violates the policy.) If we later find out people violate
the policy, we don't accept commits from them anymore. You can call the
system crappy or whatever, but its the system we have in place. today.

Ulm's point seems to be about transparency: "there would be no way for a
person outside of the Foundation to verify such identities." I'm not sure
the entire usefulness of such a use case (do people care about being able
to do this?)

Putting the above points aside for a moment the Foundation has had a policy
of shielding specific contributors from having their identity made public.
I can't say with a straight face that "the infrastructure is already in
place for this" (it really isn't) nor can I say that the Foundation has any
written policies about how to safeguard, share, divulge, or otherwise use
this information and instead it has ridden on the spoken words of various
Foundation officials in the past. Its not something I'd want to build upon.


> > To clarify, I won't be opposed against making a specific exception and
> > "grandfathering" any devs who had commit access before the cut-off date
> > when GLEP 76 was implemented.
> >
>
> I propose foundation to vote for add the use of pseudonym in the GLEP 76.
> For keeping Gentoo a confortable and inclusive place.
>
> > However, going forward, we shouldn't allow any further exceptions from
> > the real name policy.
> >
>

I'm not especially keen on grandfathering people into the project in this
way because I think it defers the problem. Pseudonymous contributors want
to contribute but cannot. Letting in people who happened to be contributors
before glep 76 doesn't solve this problem, it just defers it in the hopes
that new contributors who fall into this bucket get dissuaded before they
push for changes.


>
> who said that we cannot allow any further excepions from the real name
> policy?
>
> --
> ======================================
> Thanks,
> Alice Ferrazzi
>
> Gentoo Kernel Project Leader
> PGP: 2E4E 0856 461C 0585 1336 F496 5621 A6B2 8638 781A
> ======================================
>
>