On 14/09/2022 11:58, demerphq wrote:
Yes. The way that git models identity is flawed as it makes the
mistake in assuming names are constant attributes of a person. Of
course this is not true at all, people change names for all kinds of
reasons and in some countries close to half the population will change
their name over the course of their lifetime at least once, when they
marry. So this is not some woke issue, it's a long standing issue in
how men traditionally model identity in software systems. I'm a man
and I've made that mistake myself, it's a common blindspot.
Git really should use some level of non cleartext indirection on
identity, and store that data outside of the change log. Then history
wouldn't need to be written to update someone's particulars and many
identity concerns would just go away.
Arguably .mailmap is just a workaround for the mismatch between model
and reality and doesnt really solve the problems of names changing and
actually makes it worse. Really this should be fixed at a deeper
level. The trick I guess is how would one do that in a back compatible
way.
Yves
I understand what you mean, and agree that mailmap is just a workaround
for this issue, having been designed to unify a user's multiple
identifiers, rather than helping move on from a now-invalid identifier.
Being completely new to this mailing list, however, I feel that solving
the issues you raise might be a might much for me to take on.
Instead, for now, I'm interested to see what we can do with mailmap as a
workaround. I like the idea of using URL encoding, and would like to
hear others' opinions on doing so. I think it provides a social signal
on its obfuscated state, it prevents people from accidentally finding
out, and is easy and efficient to execute.
- Florine
