On Sun, Jul 6, 2025 at 9:30 AM brian m. carlson <sandals@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Our submission guidelines require people to use their real name, but > this is not always suitable for various reasons. > > For people who are transgender or non-binary and are transitioning or > who think they might want to transition, it can be a major obstacle and > cause major discomfort to require the use of their real name. This is > made worse by the fact that Git provides no way to change names built > into history, so the use of a deadname is forever. Our code of conduct > states that we "pledge to act and interact in ways that contribute to an > open, welcoming, diverse, inclusive, and healthy community," and > changing this policy is one way we can improve things for contributors. > > In addition, there are some developers who are so widely known > pseudonymously that they have a Wikipedia page with their handle and no > real name. It would seem silly to reject patches from people who are > known and respected in their open-source community just because they > don't wish to share a real name. > > There are also other good reasons why people might operate > pseudonymously: because they or their family members are well known and > they wish to protect their privacy, because of current or past > harassment or retaliation or fear of that happening in the future, or > because of concerns about unwanted attention from government officials > or other authority figures. As much as possible, we want to welcome > contributions from anyone who is willing to participate positively in > our community without having them worry about their safety or privacy. > > In all of these cases, we should allow people to proceed using a > preferred name or pseudonymously if, in their best judgment, that's the > right thing to do. State that it is common to use a real name but > explicitly mention that contributors who are not comfortable doing so or > prefer to operate pseudonymously or under a preferred name can proceed > otherwise. Use "some form of your real name" since some current > contributors use shortened forms of their name or use initials, which > have always been considered acceptable. > > Retain the prohibition on anonymous contributions that the Linux kernel > has to ensure that we have some line of provenance to a known (if > pseudonymous) author who might be able to respond to questions about it. > > This helps guide people who would be fine using their real name but have > misconfigured `user.name` thinking it is intended to be a username or is > used for authentication (despite our documentation to the contrary), but > also allows for a variety of circumstances where the contributor would > feel more comfortable not doing so. > > Additionally, retain the section header ID for ease of linking across > versions. > > Signed-off-by: brian m. carlson <sandals@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> > --- I wholeheartedly agree with this suggested change. Reviewed-by: Jacob Keller <jacob.keller@xxxxxxxxx>
