Legal names (was: AM report for Vagrant Cascadian <vagrant@freegeek.org>)

[Joerg Jaspert <joerg@debian.org>]

Hi,

while this was raised for a specific applicant, lets make this a general
statement.

In general we do require every applicant to join the project using their
legal name, not any given synonym they might use. This is one reason why
we require multiple signatures on every key added to the keyring.[1]

But as usual with every rule there *might* be good reasons why this rule
should not be applied and someone should be able to join using a synonym.

It should, and always will be, a very rarely used exception. It is hard
to write down exactly when it could be applied, so I don't. Just - a
simple "I don't want you to know it, sod off" or "I prefer this other
name, sounds much nicer" won't ever work.


Currently we think a good way to do this is to have the applicant be
known to multiple Debian Developers who speak up for them to the DAM.
The applicant, who should be a long-term contributor already, also needs
to be willing to reveal his identity to the DAM, DSA and the
at-that-time-acting leader, together with the reason why he wants the
synonym to be used. Those mails can, of course, be encrypted to the
various persons.

That way there can be exceptions but the project still can trace people
if they really need it, going through the persons mentioned above.

[1] Of course this relies on the people signing keys doing this
    right. But right now we are not discussing that part. :)

-- 
bye, Joerg
<helix> doogie: you have an interesting definition for 'interact with
people' that means 'make them want to jump off cliffs'