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

[Kristian Fiskerstrand]

On 4/9/19 11:30 PM, 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.
>
> Although it does not address the issue for user contributors who would
> like to use a pseudonym, I believe it would still be a step in the right
> direction by being more inclusive to existing developers who have been
> helping Gentoo for years.

If you are to provide anything related to this, I'd suggest also
providing (i) a template copyright assignment document that assigns the
copyright of any work to the foundation (will only be valid in countries
where this is allowed, including US), and (ii) a policy document when
the real name can be disclosed when needed (e.g in a court case
disputing the copyright).

There are several non-legal reasons for not allowing pseudonyms as to
how it impacts the community, expectations of security, etc, but from
the legal point of view one thing to consider is e.g
https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/sites.suffolk.edu/dist/5/1153/files/2014/12/McJohn-THE-GPL-MEETS-THE-UCC.pdf

-- 
Kristian Fiskerstrand
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