Can contributors use pseudonyms to sign the participation agreement?

[domenic]

whatwg/html#4530 has @phistuck attempting to contribute a small fix, but I am unsure whether signing a legal agreement using a pseudonym is something the SG would agree to. He points out that other CLAs have accepted that in the past, although I don't know if they consulted their lawyers in each case.

SG help on this would be appreciated.

[phistuck]

Google as well as jQuery consulted with a lawyer.

[phistuck]

@annevk and @domenic - from the agreement status page -

After an agreement is submitted, it is verified by the WHATWG. This is a manual process, but is usually completed quickly if it's preventing a pull request from being accepted.

This is preventing whatwg/html#4530 from being accepted for three months. It would be great if you expedited the process.

[domenic]

The SG is responsible for resolving this issue, not the editors.

[phistuck]

@domenic - who/where should I ping, then?
IRC? A mailing list of some sort? An organization?
Would an approval from single organization that participates in the steering group (for example, Google) suffice?
Or is a consensus required?

[domenic]

The thread at #93 is the appropriate place to ping. You can read about how the SG makes decisions at https://whatwg.org/sg-policy

[phistuck]

@bengoodger
@vmunix
@darinadler
@JasonJosephWeber
It would be great if you assisted here.

Thank you.

[othermaciej]

Apologies for the delay. We will also consult with lawyers.

[michaelchampion]

Consider the SG pinged, thanks for the reminder. We’ve discussed but not driven to a conclusion, sorry!

…

On Jul 15, 2019, at 08:36, PhistucK ***@***.***> wrote: @domenic - who/where should I ping, then? IRC? A mailing list of some sort? An organization? Would an approval from single organization that participates in the steering group (for example, Google) suffice? Or is a consensus required? — You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or mute the thread.

[phistuck]

@bengoodger
@vmunix
@darinadler
@JasonJosephWeber
@michaelchampion
@othermaciej
Another ping. Please...

[henceproved]

Apologies on the delay here. We have been discussing and trying to find a way to make this work. Based on the strong advice of our lawyers in this regard, the steering group has decided that contributors cannot use pseudonyms to sign the participation agreement. Without confirming the real identity of the individual, we cannot confirm the validity of the contract with WHATWG, and can also not make a determination about whether the participation agreement can be signed as an individual, or needs to be signed by the employer. Due to these reasons, we cannot allow contributors to sign the participation agreement using pseudonyms.

However, we completely understand that you want to use your pseudonym to make contributions, and not your real identity. We are open to designing a way in which, once you sign the agreement with your real identity, it can be kept out of the public domain. That way, your contributions could only show your pseudonym. I am not sure how exactly that would work in practice, and what changes (if any) are needed in the infrastructure to make that work seamlessly, but we can discuss that (sg@whatwg.org), if this is a feasible option for you.

Again, apologies on the delay here, this has been a tricky one. But, we value your contributions and would like to find a way to make this work for you.

[phistuck]

@henceproved - thank you for the thoughtful reply.
I think I am open to such an option, provided that there would be very limited visibility (a very limited number of people could see my details) into the details I enter.

I would prefer to know who exactly has access to my details, including notification about access expansion (adding another person to the access list). I am not sure this is a strong requirement, let me know if this is surely unfeasible.
It would also be nice if I could use two e-mail addresses (one for signing and one for contributing), but this is not a strong requirement.

And of course, I would need to know that my details (specifically, my name) are not disclosed with anyone outside of the limited number of people via a clause in the contributor agreement (I did not check whether this already exists).

[annevk]

I don't really understand the SG's reply or how we are meant to enforce that. What tells a pseudonym apart from a GitHub username?

How would https://github.com/whatwg/participate.whatwg.org#process-for-editors be modified to account for this?

[domenic]

I think it's pretty easy for editors to use human judgment to tell when something is a pseudonym. If all else fails, you can ask the contributor directly whether they signed this legal contract using the same name they use to sign other legal contracts. I suspect most would not lie.

If the editor's judgment still disagrees after asking for confirmation, they can escalate to the SG. I am sure legal procedures exist for when someone attempts to sign a paper contract as "InternetPerson1234" and you want to call their bluff.

I think it's important for editors to do our best to safeguard the legal foundation of our IPR commitments.