[coreboot] Real name policy

[Alberto Bursi]

On 08/03/2018 01:05, Taiidan at gmx.com wrote:
> A lot of people whos opinions I respect have commented on this and I 
> thank them for their time but that being said I still don't understand 
> how a "real" name policy helps avoid problems, it isn't as if the 
> coreboot leadership meets someone in real life and asks them to 
> present a passport which is then verified by a handy federal officer.
>

It's not to verify your name, as you pointed out it's not very effective 
at that.

The measure is there to make sure that a company can't say the code you 
posted was theirs (which is what happened with SCO).

With a real/plausible name, if they want to claim it's their stuff in 
court, then they need to pull up someone with that name, using that 
email, which is also a programmer that could have plausibly done that, 
and also claim that this person was their own employee at the time the 
code was posted.

It's not impossible to pull this off, but it is so much harder than if 
the project accepted nicknames without email (that have no legal value, 
i.e. you don't have the nickname on your ID card) or totally anonymous 
contributions.

And any company that told the judge that their man was posting with a 
fake name would just get laughed out of court.

> I wish to correct a few small bugs but at the same time I don't want 
> to provide my name, what should I do? (C) Taiidan 2018 all rights 
> reserved? IANAL but I don't see that as any different from an 
> unverified name.
>

Human names, even if fake, work for the above thing, nicknames don't.

It's a measure to protect the project from legal trolling, not to 
confirm the contributors identity.

-Alberto