Two GCC stories

Posted Jun 30, 2010 23:56 UTC (Wed) by dirtyepic (guest, #30178)
Parent article: Two GCC stories

What I find to be more interesting is that NightStrike first offered to merely ping patches that hadn't received attention or had been approved but never committed, and asked if people would please reply to a patch thread when committing the code. This was met with some responses such as

> By the way, I wonder how many contributors can even think taking
> seriously a message coming from "NightStrike". Not me, for sure...

and

> Like Paolo, I'm a lot more likely to read a message from someone with
> a real name, or at least a name that sounds real.

So for me at least, there is an issue here that has nothing to do with security, and everything to do with the perception of identity. This individual isn't writing or reviewing or checking in code, they're offering to perform a service to the community - a menial one at that - and are being refused on the basis of their name. Is this justifiable? Is it appropriate to turn down contributers, not based on their actions or work, but on some aspect of their persona? If you replace "real" in that second quote with "Chinese" or "female" it becomes ludicrous. After all, that would be discriminatory. But how is this any different? Maybe because it's an affectation? Maybe it's on the shoulders of the contributor to be responsible for conforming to the social norms of the community. But should a person really be judged on anything but their actions, and can communities afford to alienate those want to contribute useful work but retain their anonymity? It's an interesting line to walk.

R. Hill (if that's important to you)

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Two GCC stories

Posted Jul 1, 2010 9:28 UTC (Thu) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link] (6 responses)

and are being refused on the basis of their name.

You're wrong. He's not refused based on his name - he's refused based on his lack of real (sounding) name. The last time I was in the company of people I hadn't knew before, we introduced ourselves. Of course I have no way to verify that her name is really the one she said, but still, it's general politeness (and not security measure!) to state one's name.

Of course, this depends on that particular community. In some mailing lists I've subscribed it's recommended to use a real name. In web forums generally it's not recommended to state a real name. Policies vary.

names

Posted Jul 1, 2010 11:01 UTC (Thu) by jpnp (guest, #63341) [Link] (5 responses)

The whole concept of "real-sounding name" is incredibly subjective.

Your name is what is commonly used to identify yourself. If you use different identifiers in different contexts then you can have multiple versions of your name (e.g. many people called Jon actually have Jonathan on the birth certificate or passport).

I have a number of friends and acquaintances who were first introduced to me in real life by what started out as nick-names or online idents. Some of these people use a nick-name in personal life and their original birth name in their professional life, some use their nick-name with everyone but their passport and bank account, some have gone through the process of legally registering their new name and have no other legal name! In many cases I went years before knowing which category my friends were and what their official name was.

Requiring real-world identifiable contact details before allowing someone to sysAd important project infrastructure seems sensible enough. Ignoring people's contributions to mail-lists because it fails your subjective realness test just seems pathetic.

names

Posted Jul 3, 2010 2:52 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (4 responses)

I think it's more sane than that. First of all, I dispute that NightStrike isn't a real name. What it is is a name that appears likely not to be the name he uses in parts of his life he cares about. And that makes one believe he's hiding. He wants to be able to do and say things that he can't be made to pay for in those other areas of his life.

Maybe that's an unreasonable suspicion, but I think that's at the base of people's reaction to dealing with people who go by cute screen names.

names

Posted Jul 7, 2010 14:59 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (3 responses)

There are other interpretations, though. I've used the name I use here as an on-net pseudonym for almost twenty years now, but not as an attempt to evade real-life consequences; more as an indication of a shift in personality. Me-in-real-life *does not act* like me-on-the-net, and the name change makes that more obvious than it might otherwise be.

Now perhaps this is uncommon, but it's not unheard of.

names

Posted Jul 12, 2010 21:55 UTC (Mon) by Tet (subscriber, #5433) [Link] (2 responses)

Then, of course, there are people like me. Some 20 years ago now, I legally changed my name to be my online pseudonym. It might not sound real, but it is now my real name...

names

Posted Jul 12, 2010 22:44 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (1 responses)

There are several people who've done the same thing. The man now known as MegaZone is one.

(btw, presumably you kept a surname, for convenience's sake if nothing else? So very many things fall over, from ecommerce to random form-filling and bank applications, if you don't have a surname...)

names

Posted Jul 13, 2010 8:05 UTC (Tue) by Tet (subscriber, #5433) [Link]

No, I didn't keep a surname. And yes, only having a single name does cause all manner of things to fall over. I've got used to it by now...

Two GCC stories

Posted Jul 1, 2010 10:54 UTC (Thu) by jwakely (subscriber, #60262) [Link]

> This individual isn't writing or reviewing or checking in code, they're offering to perform a service to the community - a menial one at that - and are being refused on the basis of their name.

That was only one part of (some people's) objections, not all contributors were happy with his process.

Currently someone submits a patch for review, maintainers review and maybe approve it for checkin. NightStrike was then replying to every thread asking "has this been checked in?", requiring the submitter or reviewer to confirm something that's already available publicly in the ChangeLog files, svn history, gcc-cvs mail archive etc. -- that was seen as unnecessary noise.

Two GCC stories

Posted Jul 1, 2010 20:08 UTC (Thu) by pebolle (guest, #35204) [Link]

> If you replace "real" in that second quote with "Chinese" or "female" it becomes ludicrous.

Maybe that is because when you do that you change the reasoning behind that argument beyond recognition.

Two GCC stories

Posted Jul 9, 2010 0:17 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

My logon id here is a nym. It's pretty obviously not real (and most people will know the children's story it comes from).

But it's BASED ON a real name of mine - note I carefully did not say "my real name".

Why shouldn't people want to use a nym? After all, on the net no-one know you're an owl :-)

Cheers,
Wol