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If contributing to your project requires much more than git commit --signoff — in Fuchsia's case, a full-on Google Account! — this will exclude many pseudonymou

If contributing to your project requires much more than git commit --signoff — in Fuchsia's case, a full-on Google Account! — this will exclude many pseudonymous developers who conceive of things such as privacy in terms of capabilities (not pinky promises). Which seems relevant for a security-focused OS.

snazz 6y ago
I'm guessing that most of these pseudonymous developers—of which there can't possibly be too many—would distrust Google enough not to contribute even if it were easier to do so without a Google Account.
- flotzam 6y ago
  Uneasy bedfellows but nah. Some pockets inside of Google (like AOSP) are, on balance, still beneficial. What a world.
- rhn_mk1 6y ago
  As a pseudonymous developer, I fail to see any harm in contributing to projects run by Google in general. Fuchsia is not a monopolist way to exert control over the market (not today at least), it doesn't seem to be explicitly made for evil, and can be forked to let the community steer it.
  - Jnr 6y ago
    I would not be surprised if Google account ToS has some point that complicates things for contributors or people forking the code. I haven't read Google ToS lately so I can't say there is something like this but that document is huge and keeps changing all the time. If I was a pseudonymous developer, I would probably not go through that.
  - zepto 6y ago
    Since Fuschia seems to be a replacement for Android, why would you think it isn’t a way for Google to exert control over the market? As for forking, that option only becomes practical if the community version can muster adequate resources versus the Google controlled version.
    - rhn_mk1 6y ago
      As of today, there are no phones running Fuchsia, so it's hard to evaluate if it's going to be useful for any kind of control. Does it have feature parity with Linux? Forking can be practical without competing for the same use case.
      - zepto 6y ago
        Both of these are true, and it is indeed possible that Fuschia is intended to be genuinely open. However that seek unlikely given that there are many actors who would like to exclude Google services from their devices and Google is at the same existential risk if that happens as they were when they introduced Android. And yes forking can be practical, but it very often isn’t, partially in the case of a very large corporately sponsored codebase. So ‘we can just fork it’ doesn’t mitigate the concerns.
hacknat 6y ago
You can't pseudonymously contribute to most OSes of note. Linux for example.
- flotzam 6y ago
  I'd just like to interject for moment. What you're refering to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but sure you can contribute to the Linux kernel pseudonymously. Think of a plausible name, "git commit --signoff", and you're good to go. There's no enforcement of slave names for kernel contributions, it's all just a minimally viable legal fiction.
  - mrtranscendence 6y ago
    Slave names, really? You can lie about your name, I suppose, but strictly speaking you're violating the stated rules and could face having your code rejected or removed: "code from anonymous (or pseudonymous) contributors will not be accepted". (https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/1.Intro.html https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/1.Intro.html) And since you mentioned GNU, would you be able to pull the same trick on a GNU project? Don't they require you to sign away your copyright, with paperwork? So you wouldn't be able to contribute to (some portions of) GNU/Linux pseudonymously.
    - flotzam 6y ago
      > Slave names, really? It's a common way that pseudonym aficionados refer to their civil names. Gallows humor. > You can lie about your name, I suppose, but strictly speaking you're violating the stated rules and could face having your code rejected or removed: "code from anonymous (or pseudonymous) contributors will not be accepted" And yet it won't be rejected or removed. The preceding sentence is "It is imperative that all code contributed to the kernel be legitimately free software." If you don't betray the project, nobody will make it a problem.
      - mrtranscendence 6y ago

snazz 6y ago

I'm guessing that most of these pseudonymous developers—of which there can't possibly be too many—would distrust Google enough not to contribute even if it were easier to do so without a Google Account.

flotzam 6y ago
Uneasy bedfellows but nah. Some pockets inside of Google (like AOSP) are, on balance, still beneficial. What a world.
rhn_mk1 6y ago
As a pseudonymous developer, I fail to see any harm in contributing to projects run by Google in general. Fuchsia is not a monopolist way to exert control over the market (not today at least), it doesn't seem to be explicitly made for evil, and can be forked to let the community steer it.
- Jnr 6y ago
  I would not be surprised if Google account ToS has some point that complicates things for contributors or people forking the code. I haven't read Google ToS lately so I can't say there is something like this but that document is huge and keeps changing all the time. If I was a pseudonymous developer, I would probably not go through that.
- zepto 6y ago
  Since Fuschia seems to be a replacement for Android, why would you think it isn’t a way for Google to exert control over the market? As for forking, that option only becomes practical if the community version can muster adequate resources versus the Google controlled version.
  - rhn_mk1 6y ago
    As of today, there are no phones running Fuchsia, so it's hard to evaluate if it's going to be useful for any kind of control. Does it have feature parity with Linux? Forking can be practical without competing for the same use case.
    - zepto 6y ago
      Both of these are true, and it is indeed possible that Fuschia is intended to be genuinely open. However that seek unlikely given that there are many actors who would like to exclude Google services from their devices and Google is at the same existential risk if that happens as they were when they introduced Android. And yes forking can be practical, but it very often isn’t, partially in the case of a very large corporately sponsored codebase. So ‘we can just fork it’ doesn’t mitigate the concerns.

hacknat 6y ago

You can't pseudonymously contribute to most OSes of note. Linux for example.

flotzam 6y ago
I'd just like to interject for moment. What you're refering to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but sure you can contribute to the Linux kernel pseudonymously. Think of a plausible name, "git commit --signoff", and you're good to go. There's no enforcement of slave names for kernel contributions, it's all just a minimally viable legal fiction.
- mrtranscendence 6y ago
  Slave names, really? You can lie about your name, I suppose, but strictly speaking you're violating the stated rules and could face having your code rejected or removed: "code from anonymous (or pseudonymous) contributors will not be accepted". (https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/1.Intro.html https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/1.Intro.html) And since you mentioned GNU, would you be able to pull the same trick on a GNU project? Don't they require you to sign away your copyright, with paperwork? So you wouldn't be able to contribute to (some portions of) GNU/Linux pseudonymously.
  - flotzam 6y ago
    > Slave names, really? It's a common way that pseudonym aficionados refer to their civil names. Gallows humor. > You can lie about your name, I suppose, but strictly speaking you're violating the stated rules and could face having your code rejected or removed: "code from anonymous (or pseudonymous) contributors will not be accepted" And yet it won't be rejected or removed. The preceding sentence is "It is imperative that all code contributed to the kernel be legitimately free software." If you don't betray the project, nobody will make it a problem.
    - mrtranscendence 6y ago