From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: tytso@mit.edu Subject: Re: What's in a name? Let's use a (uuid,name,email) triplet Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2010 16:44:16 -0400 Message-ID: <20100318204416.GM8256@thunk.org> References: <4ba2293f.c5c2f10a.5e9c.5c4a@mx.google.com> <4ba27424.9804cc0a.4b1f.11b1@mx.google.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Cc: Linus Torvalds , git@vger.kernel.org To: Michael Witten X-From: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Thu Mar 18 21:44:51 2010 Return-path: Envelope-to: gcvg-git-2@lo.gmane.org Received: from vger.kernel.org ([209.132.180.67]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1NsMaE-0000SF-F3 for gcvg-git-2@lo.gmane.org; Thu, 18 Mar 2010 21:44:46 +0100 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1752247Ab0CRUol (ORCPT ); Thu, 18 Mar 2010 16:44:41 -0400 Received: from thunk.org ([69.25.196.29]:57644 "EHLO thunker.thunk.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751261Ab0CRUok (ORCPT ); Thu, 18 Mar 2010 16:44:40 -0400 Received: from root (helo=closure.thunk.org) by thunker.thunk.org with local-esmtp (Exim 4.50 #1 (Debian)) id 1NsMZn-0000XC-EZ; Thu, 18 Mar 2010 16:44:19 -0400 Received: from tytso by closure.thunk.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1NsMZk-0006GY-Ve; Thu, 18 Mar 2010 16:44:16 -0400 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <4ba27424.9804cc0a.4b1f.11b1@mx.google.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.20 (2009-06-14) X-SA-Exim-Connect-IP: X-SA-Exim-Mail-From: tytso@thunk.org X-SA-Exim-Scanned: No (on thunker.thunk.org); SAEximRunCond expanded to false Sender: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk List-ID: X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org Archived-At: On Thu, Mar 18, 2010 at 11:42:44AM -0700, Michael Witten wrote: > Could people still bungle the uuid or enter trash? > Sure, but that's essentially no different than the > current situation. This would be an improvement, > because at least some people would take advantage > of it; in fact, I bet most people would use it > properly because: > > * The information required is easily remembered > and reproduced; it has that emotional aspect. > > * People have an emotional attachment to getting > proper attribution for their work, and this > helps. The problem is that people don't get emotionally attached to a UUID. And even if the UUID is generated algorithmically, they need to remember, gee, was my UUID generated using: Theodore Y. Ts'o Theodore Tso Theodore T'so (*) Theodore Y Tso Theodore Tso (*) The VA Linux folks screwed up where the apostrophe goes in some press release, and the mispelling of my last name has followed me for the last ten years since then. More importantly, there's a lot more to someone's reputation than just Git. What about reviews of other people's patches on LKML? Can you **honestly** expect people to say, Hi, I'm and here are the things that you need to fix with your patch.... People who give thoughtful reviews of other people's code count for a lot, and people are not going to track that sort of thing by UUID. They are going to track it by name and e-mail address. Or what about papers? Can you honestly expect that it would matter even one iota if someone put in a bibliography of a paper R. Card (14a8da4b-0231-497b-aa66-1809cc9727f9), T. Y. Ts'o (dd1b51a1-ce2a-41fd-ae89-f68b7f0ace85), and S. Tweedie (9052e458-32cc-11df-93b8-0016eb0fac40), "Design and implementation of the second extended filesystem," in Proceedings of the 1994 Amsterdam Linux Conference, 1994. Is that going to contribute to my identity any? I don't think so. Finally, if someone misses one of my commits in a git changelog, so what? People don't guage impact by the number of commits. There are some people who have huge numbers commits, but they are all spelling corrections. A developer's reputation is developed over many months or years of contributions; of interactions over e-mail; interactions in hallway discussions at conferences; papers which they author; etc. It's not just about git commits. - Ted