From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.0 (2014-02-07) on aws-us-west-2-korg-lkml-1.web.codeaurora.org Received: from vger.kernel.org (vger.kernel.org [23.128.96.18]) by smtp.lore.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0C9D9C433EF for ; Sun, 13 Mar 2022 00:03:44 +0000 (UTC) Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S231520AbiCMAEs (ORCPT ); Sat, 12 Mar 2022 19:04:48 -0500 Received: from lindbergh.monkeyblade.net ([23.128.96.19]:50916 "EHLO lindbergh.monkeyblade.net" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S229579AbiCMAEr (ORCPT ); Sat, 12 Mar 2022 19:04:47 -0500 Received: from pb-smtp20.pobox.com (pb-smtp20.pobox.com [173.228.157.52]) by lindbergh.monkeyblade.net (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 9AE2E939AD for ; Sat, 12 Mar 2022 16:03:40 -0800 (PST) Received: from pb-smtp20.pobox.com (unknown [127.0.0.1]) by pb-smtp20.pobox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 15D41174BF6; Sat, 12 Mar 2022 19:03:40 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from junio@pobox.com) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed; d=pobox.com; h=from:to:cc :subject:references:date:in-reply-to:message-id:mime-version :content-type; s=sasl; bh=cjewj0CBz4EYJi4AWPXMImEl2/9c8Z6mTCOkjY +cb5Q=; b=i3Db3eptYn47LQMiHENnXZ7oaCFrTwJGrzc8nrkYZLRrx559U+HJIe OVyyRVNRKsL8imy70eL+B61ikW/kH9wljYWLttywwybohKK8/i7Dy+hFLGljfmF6 OJLSbtB+Xq5iiQWiB4QTRA1YP+j/GUjimvrj1hr3M0mNkkizjDK2g= Received: from pb-smtp20.sea.icgroup.com (unknown [127.0.0.1]) by pb-smtp20.pobox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0E4EE174BF4; Sat, 12 Mar 2022 19:03:40 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from junio@pobox.com) Received: from pobox.com (unknown [35.195.168.105]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by pb-smtp20.pobox.com (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 4B407174BF3; Sat, 12 Mar 2022 19:03:37 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from junio@pobox.com) From: Junio C Hamano To: Sean Allred Cc: git@vger.kernel.org, sallred@epic.com, grmason@epic.com, sconrad@epic.com Subject: Re: Dealing with corporate email recycling References: <878rtebxk0.fsf@gmail.com> Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2022 16:03:35 -0800 In-Reply-To: <878rtebxk0.fsf@gmail.com> (Sean Allred's message of "Sat, 12 Mar 2022 16:38:56 -0600") Message-ID: User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/27.2 (gnu/linux) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Pobox-Relay-ID: 081CA008-A261-11EC-BE16-C85A9F429DF0-77302942!pb-smtp20.pobox.com Precedence: bulk List-ID: X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org Sean Allred writes: > As a baseline, we know the following statements are true: > > 1. A person's preferred name can change at any time. > 2. A person's preferred email can change at any time. > 3. Neither of these pieces of information are necessarily > identifying in a given codebase. Another thing we know is 4. People know that old e-mail addresses stay in archives and address books of people, and find it wise to avoid reusing an address somebody else (especially well-known ones) has been using, so that they do not get e-mails from total strangers and having to tell them that the intended recipient does not read the mailbox anymore. > 1. Do nothing. Leave it to the developer to determine the correct > contact information without assistance. > > This doesn't really resolve the confusion, but it is technically > an option. > > 2. Use gitmailmap(5) functionality to resolve historical emails to > primary emails. > > Sadly this doesn't actually solve the email recycling problem. > Since one email could be used by multiple developers, there's no > way (that I can see) to use a single mailmap file to resolve one > of these emails to a single person. GNU arch (tla) had an interesting idea around this area and used combination of time and e-mail address to identify a person. one@corp--$date referred to the person who had control of the address on the specified date, where $date can be abbreviated to 2022 or 202201 to mean 20220101. The mailmap allows "Name e-mail" or "e-mail" to be mapped to canonical "Name e-mail", but we should be able to coax "valid time range" information encoded in each entry of the .mailmap format, i.e. "if you see 'Name e-mail' between time X and Y, map that to...".