[Haskell-cafe] Hackage accounts and real names

[Jeff Wheeler]

On Mon, Apr 5, 2010 at 6:00 PM, David House <dmhouse at gmail.com> wrote:

> You're coming at this from the wrong angle. Rather than saying, "why
> should we allow pseudonyms?" we should ask "why are we restricting the
> freedom of users that just wish to contribute code?"

Exactly. I don't understand the argument about not trusting code from
anonymous people. If you don't want to depend on the code, don't. If
somebody wants to publish it to Hackage, fine; you still have the
choice to use or not use it as you would if they published it anywhere
else.

> If I'm honest, I'm really surprised so many people have replied in
> favour of the restriction. I've stated an explicit way in which it's
> hurting the community, and the only person to say anything in the
> policy's defence other that "well, why not?" has been Ross (and I hope
> I dealt with the flaky arguments he linked to in my reply).

I'm extremely surprised, too, which is why I responded.

> (P.s., I certainly wouldn't describe the use of pseudonym anonymity a
> "subculture". Perhaps it's not the norm in academic circles, but
> virtually all websites requiring a registration allow you to use
> whatever you like as a username. As does email. As does IRC. I can't
> think of many bits of the internet that don't.)

Yep. On the internet, you get to be anonymous. Why don't we kick
people that don't have their name in their email address or IRC nick?

-- 
Jeff Wheeler

Undergraduate, Electrical Engineering
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign