Clearly identify acknowledgements of anonymous contributors via GitHub IDs

[selfissued]

In parallel with the suggestion at w3c/vc-data-model#1585 (comment), acknowledgements of anonymous contributors via their GitHub IDs should be clearly labelled as such, and placed in a separate list from the named contributors.

This should be done across all working group specifications where anonymous contributions are acknowledged via GitHub IDs. I will wait until the working group has discussed this issue before filing similar issues on other specifications affected by this practice.

[TallTed]

I strongly disagree with characterizing "attribution by GitHub ID" as "anonymous attribution". Yes, these are somewhat arbitrary identifiers, but so are all the other identifiers used for any contributor, whether "real name" or "W3C ID" or "LinkedIn handle" or otherwise.

Contributors should be allowed to identify themselves however they like, within the margins necessary to connect substantive contributions to appropriate IPR commitments.

[jandrieu]

I agree with @TallTed. It's actually a violation of modern privacy sensibility, and GDPR frankly, to require that people use legal names for anything in our work. People should be allowed to be recognized with whatever lexical phrase they wish.

Whether or not a given contribution is made under and appropriate IPR scheme is a different matter altogether. It's the W3C's job to ensure that all contributors have, in fact, made appropriate legal commitments. That does not mean that the people participating have any obligation WHATSOEVER to reveal a formal, legal name.

In fact, most participants' legal names have nothing to do with W3C IPR except for invited witnesses, as the IPR is signed by the company on whose behalf we are engaged. Even more so, I'm confident that "Mike Jones" is not a unique legal identifier. Should we follow that standard, then we'd also need to capture and publish some additional PII so we can properly disambiguate you @selfissued against all the other Mike Jones who may or may not have signed a contributors agreement. Hopefully that sounds as ridiculous to you as it does to me.

There's no call for requiring the publication of any PII in our specifications, including individual's legal names.

[TallTed]

It might be worth calling these out as and GitHub users xyz, zyx, and asdf because such unqualified handles might otherwise be from anywhere.

[brentzundel]

We believe this has been addressed, closing.