Gentoo Archives: gentoo-project

From: Gokturk Yuksek <gokturk@g.o>
To: gentoo-project@l.g.o, Alec Warner <antarus@g.o>
Cc: Ulrich Mueller <ulm@g.o>
Subject: Re: [gentoo-project] call for agenda items -- council meeting 2019-04-14
Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2019 00:23:03
Message-Id: 179f75a3-4800-4f4b-967e-22eac9c3ebee@gentoo.org
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-project] call for agenda items -- council meeting 2019-04-14 by Alec Warner
1 Alec Warner:
2 > On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 2:17 AM Alice Ferrazzi <alicef@g.o> wrote:
3 >
4 >> The 04/10/2019 07:59, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
5 >>>>>>>> On Wed, 10 Apr 2019, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
6 >>>
7 >>>>>>>> On Tue, 09 Apr 2019, Gokturk Yuksek wrote:
8 >>>
9 >>>> I'd like to (informally) propose the following, for which I'm willing
10 >>>> to formulate as a GLEP proposal if there is interest:
11 >>>
12 >>>> The Foundation has an established practice of storing the legal names
13 >>>> of developers who join under a pseudonym. The infrastructure is
14 >>>> already in place for this. I think that allowing these developers to
15 >>>> commit using their pseudonyms as long as the Foundation is informed
16 >>>> their real identity does not exacerbate the legal risks they already
17 >>>> pose. The foundation may decide their arbitrary criteria on who is
18 >>>> eligible for this type of protection, including requiring sound legal
19 >>>> reasons for them to keep their identities hidden. I understand that
20 >>>> the maintenance of this could be a burden for the Foundation in
21 >>>> theory, but in practice I suspect this number is very low already.
22 >>>
23 >>> That doesn't work, because there would be no way for a person outside of
24 >>> the Foundation to verify such identities.
25 >>>
26 >> There is no way also for foundation to check all sign-off are assigned
27 >> to real legal names.
28 >>
29 >
30 > So these are two separate points. I don't quite understand Ulm's point but
31 > it is different than the point you are raising.
32 >
33 > Your point seems to be that somehow the "Foundation must be able to check
34 > if all sign-offs are signed by a legal name." We already made it clear we
35 > don't do this checking. That doesn't mean its OK to use an pseudonym (it is
36 > not, and doing so violates the policy.) If we later find out people violate
37 > the policy, we don't accept commits from them anymore. You can call the
38 > system crappy or whatever, but its the system we have in place. today.
39 >
40 > Ulm's point seems to be about transparency: "there would be no way for a
41 > person outside of the Foundation to verify such identities." I'm not sure
42 > the entire usefulness of such a use case (do people care about being able
43 > to do this?)
44 >
45 > Putting the above points aside for a moment the Foundation has had a policy
46 > of shielding specific contributors from having their identity made public.
47 > I can't say with a straight face that "the infrastructure is already in
48 > place for this" (it really isn't) nor can I say that the Foundation has any
49 > written policies about how to safeguard, share, divulge, or otherwise use
50 > this information and instead it has ridden on the spoken words of various
51 > Foundation officials in the past. Its not something I'd want to build upon.
52 >
53 >
54 >>> To clarify, I won't be opposed against making a specific exception and
55 >>> "grandfathering" any devs who had commit access before the cut-off date
56 >>> when GLEP 76 was implemented.
57 >>>
58 >>
59 >> I propose foundation to vote for add the use of pseudonym in the GLEP 76.
60 >> For keeping Gentoo a confortable and inclusive place.
61 >>
62 >>> However, going forward, we shouldn't allow any further exceptions from
63 >>> the real name policy.
64 >>>
65 >>
66 >
67 > I'm not especially keen on grandfathering people into the project in this
68 > way because I think it defers the problem. Pseudonymous contributors want
69 > to contribute but cannot. Letting in people who happened to be contributors
70 > before glep 76 doesn't solve this problem, it just defers it in the hopes
71 > that new contributors who fall into this bucket get dissuaded before they
72 > push for changes.
73 >
74 >
75
76 I see the concern of setting a precedent here. I also support more
77 transparency, and am not advocating that we include more anonymous
78 developers. I'd like to make a few clarifications:
79
80 - I believe the necessity for a pseudonym must be justified to the
81 Foundation. Therefore, I'm not suggesting that people should remain
82 anonymous for arbitrary reasons. I am also **not** suggesting that we
83 get rid of the DCO.
84
85 - Grandfathering the existing devs does not set a precedent for future
86 devs who'd like to join under a pseudonym. The situation is more complex
87 than that: since users are not allowed to contribute under a pseudonym,
88 they'd have to disclose their legal name even before they become a
89 developer. In the rare case that a user with no contributions somehow
90 finds a mentor and applies to become a dev, the recruitment process
91 requires the candidate to submit a fix to an existing bug (unless this
92 process has changed). The fix would naturally require them to disclose
93 their real name, and would defeat the purpose of joining under a
94 pseudonym. I hope this addresses the concern about setting a precedent.
95
96 - I'm only advocating for repurposing an already existing system (that
97 is the pseudonym mechanism offered by the Foundation) to bring back
98 developers who have been impacted by GLEP 76, so long as they have valid
99 reasons (based on what the Foundation deems "valid") to maintain their
100 pseudonymity. As such, I expect the extra maintenance burden on the
101 Foundation to be minimal and I'm willing to work out the details (such
102 as what k_f brought up before).
103
104 --
105 gokturk

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Re: [gentoo-project] call for agenda items -- council meeting 2019-04-14 "Andreas K. Huettel" <dilfridge@g.o>