Add exception to author Real Name policy

This matches what was decided at the Eclipse Architecture Council in March 2020 which was minuted as follows: A GitHub account as a contributor is ok, it can be traced back to an individual. An ECA must be signed in any case. This requires a real email address and this is sufficient. EMO expectation to committers is to monitor and catch/report shenanigans. The handbook wording needs an updated and will be investigated separately.

This addition assumes that we only ever use GitHub.

How do we generalize?

What is the actual rule? I'm not sure that we actually care about the name other than that Git requires that there be something there, and that it not contain any profanity or be otherwise inappropriate. The email address needs to identify somebody who has actually signed the ECA (or is a committer).

Is it enough to say something along the lines of:

The email address used in the Author field (and, when required, in the Also-by/Co-authored-by entries) must be valid and real, and the contributor must have signed the ECA.

As for GitHub email addresses, e.g. GitHubUserName@users.noreply.github.com, I'm thinking that it would be a good FAQ entry.

AFAIK, the ECA checker handles email addresses of this form, so there's no considerations other than the standard requirement that the contributor must create an Eclipse Foundation Account, set the "GitHub username" field appropriately, and sign the ECA.

added 1 commit

• 668aa92d - Add exception to author Real Name policy

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What requirements was the ECA checker written against? Or is it supposed to be have written against what we are defining here?

Is it enough to say something along the lines of:

The email address used in the Author field (and, when required, in the Also-by/Co-authored-by entries) must be valid and real, and the contributor must have signed the ECA.

I think it is close - the GitHubUserName@users.noreply.github.com is probably not a "valid/real" email address, but handling that in the FAQ seems like a good solution.

I have made an attempt at another update. Let me know what you think.

It seems that it all boils down to whether the ECA check can be performed for a commit. If so, could the requirement of the real name/email address in the commit metadata be effectively replaced (absorbed) with the more general requirement that the author of a commit must have a valid ECA on file?

mentioned in issue eclipsefdn/helpdesk#5209 (closed)

Please see eclipsefdn/helpdesk#5209 (closed) as the question came up as to what the policies are.

added 205 commits

• 668aa92d...40e0ad8f - 204 commits from branch eclipse/technology/dash:master
• 998fe8d4 - Merge branch 'master' into 'jonah/realname'

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mentioned in commit 69fa2584

merged