[Haskell-cafe] Re: Hackage accounts and real names

[David House]

On 6 April 2010 05:32, Ivan Miljenovic <ivan.miljenovic at gmail.com> wrote:
> 5) No-one is convincing anyone else to their point of view, so we have
> a stale mate.

Let me summarise the main arguments against the restriction:

1. It stops people from contributing to hackage. (It is immaterial
that if you were in their position, you would have no problem with the
restriction. Because of this policy, we have fewer libraries on
hackage.) The reason this came up is because someone on IRC wrote a
great implementation of which(1) as a Haskell library. I suggested
they put it on hackage, and they told me they wouldn't because of this
policy. The community loses out.

2. Inconsistency. If someone is known by their pseudonym on the
mailing list, IRC, haskellwiki, blogs and so on, that is how I know
them. How am I meant to find out their real name, in general? The rest
of the internet works off pseudonyms and it is more convenient for
everyone if hackage follows suit.

3. Privacy issues. Some people simply cannot reveal their real names.

I've been over this thread and couldn't see anywhere where you'd made
an attempt to refute these arguments, so I guess you take them as
solid. On the other hand, every argument put forward by the
pro-restriction group has been picked at and argued against by those
against the restriction. That is not a stalemate.