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. > Speaking generally, not only for this case, prior art arguments rarely hold, > [...] > This is not the first time that fix of SoB tag was requested, you can find such > requests in ML archives. Isn't that a prior art argument? ;-) Best wishes, B.R. -- Mailfence.com Private and secure email
