Re: [linux-sunxi] Re: [PATCH] ARM: dts: sun8i: h3: orangepi-plus: Fix Ethernet PHY mode

[Julian Calaby]

Hi,

On Fri, Jun 4, 2021 at 3:45 PM 'B.R. Oake' via linux-sunxi
<linux-sunxi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Sat Feb 13 09:51:17 CET 2021, Jernej Škrabec wrote:
> > Let me first explain that it was oversight on my side not noticing initials in
> > your SoB tag. But since the issue was raised by Maxime, I didn't follow up.
> > [...]
>
> Dear Jernej,
>
> First of all, thank you very much for all your linux-sunxi work: I
> especially appreciate the video support you've provided.
>
> Thank you for initially approving my patch. Although I first posted a
> patch to the linux-sunxi list about seven years ago, this patch was my
> first formal submission to LKML, so it meant a lot to me to see it
> accepted by a kernel developer, even if only briefly.
>
> I'm sorry for taking a long time to reply. I wanted to wait for the
> maintainers to respond to my last mail because I thought it would be
> best for them to speak for themselves on this issue. Sadly I haven't
> yet received a response from them.
>
>
> > I believe that real name means no initials, no matter what people are
> > accustomed to. From my point of view, CJ is pseudonym derived from real name.
>
> I don't think that's a widely held belief though. For example, I think
> most people consider "J.R.R. Tolkien" to be a real name, even though it
> contains initials. Also, a first name like CJ isn't necessarily derived
> from some longer name like Cathy Jane, it can simply be the person's
> given name. I'm grateful to Vagrant Cascadian for drawing our attention
> to Patrick McKenzie's essay "Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names".
> I believe we harm Linux development when we exclude people whose names
> don't fit our assumptions.
>
> Another reason for signing with initials is to ensure that other people
> cannot infer anything about the author's gender. Women especially might
> choose to do this to avoid the harassment that a female name can attract,
> as shown in these studies for example:
>
> https://ece.umd.edu/news/story/study-finds-femalename-chat-users-get-25-times-more-malicious-messages
> https://www.reach3insights.com/women-gaming-study
>
> If we forbid people from contributing in a gender-neutral way, many may
> feel they cannot contribute at all. Again, I think that when we exclude
> these people we are all worse off as a result.

While I completely sympathise with your points here, the issue isn't a
technical or social issue, but a legal one.

The DCO was introduced to provide a mechanism to trace the origin of a
piece of code for legal purposes, so my understanding is that the name
supplied needs to be your legal name.

Whilst, as you've pointed out, there are a lot of ways that names
don't match up to the normal "Firstname I. N. I. T. I. A. L. S.
Lastname" format, that is the case for the vast majority of people and
exceptions to that are rare. Your arguments against providing that
name haven't exactly helped your case either as they are similar to
the arguments someone trying to hide behind a pseudonym might use.

Your points about previous instances of this happening also don't hold
water either as we don't know the circumstances behind those cases.
Git's history is considered immutable once it makes it to an
"official" repository (generally one published publicly) so it's
likely they were oversights that weren't caught until it was too late.

Thanks,

-- 
Julian Calaby

Email: julian.calaby@xxxxxxxxx
Profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/julian.calaby/