[Haskell-cafe] Hackage accounts and real names

[Ross Paterson]

On Sun, Apr 04, 2010 at 10:28:26PM +0100, David House wrote:
> An issue came up on #haskell recently with Hackage accounts requiring
> real names. The person in question (who didn't send this email as he's
> wishing to remain anonymous) applied for a Hackage account and was
> turned down, as he refused to offer his real name for the username.
> 
> Those of us in the conversation thought this a bit of an odd policy,
> and were wondering where this came from. It also emerged that a couple
> of other people had been held back from getting Hackage accounts
> because of this reason.

Basically http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/RealNameUserAdvantages, especially
simplicity, trust and recognizability.  At root, I find it convenient
to run username allocation that way.

I am prepared to make exceptions for privacy concerns, and have done
so once, but that wasn't the case with the person you're referring to.
Their real name is all over the Internet, and they wanted to use their
first name only, which is easily linked to their full name.

I don't recall anyone else refusing to use their real name, though
a number of people have not responded to enquiries I made of them.
Of course some may have been put off by the User accounts page.