How much personal information is necessary to close a bug?

[Lex Hider]

On Wed, 2008-01-30 at 10:51 +0000, Christopher Brown wrote:
> On 30/01/2008, Lex Hider <floss at lex.hider.name> wrote:
> > Hi,
> > I was wanting to do some bug triage for fedora.
> > I checked out the list of NEW bugs for one of my favourite apps: amarok.
> > There seemed a pretty obvious bug that could now be closed:
> > https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=248625
> >
> > I tried to close it and found I didn't have the privileges to do so.
> > I asked on #fedora-devel and was pointed to the triage team wiki page
> > and that I need a Fedora Account.
> >
> > Apparently to open a Fedora account I need to give my postal address and
> > telephone number. Why is it necessary to give this personal information
> > just to close a bug?
> >
> > Contrast to other projects I have contributed to where some realizes you
> > know what you are doing or get sick of you pestering to close bugs on
> > your behalf and give you the relevant privileges.
> >
> > Here's an example of my bug closing credentials:
> > Look at Bug Killers:
> > http://www.commit-digest.org/issues/2006-04-30/
> 
> Hello Lex,
> 
> Great that you're wanting to do some triage work and yeah, that bug is
> the kind of stuff that we don't need hanging around any longer. :)
> 
> As for the information side of things, FAS is used for a number of
> things, including the ability to create packages in Fedora and there
> has to, at some point, be some accountability for how this happens.
> With bugzilla triage privs you get the ability to modify to great
> extent the bugs in Red Hat's main bug tracking system so I think its
> understandable for this to be asked. Someone with legal knowledge
> might want to add to this though.
> 
> Best place to hang out for triaging is #fedora-qa on IRC and the two
> bods leading the charge are John Poelstra and Jon Stanley.
> 
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/JohnPoelstra
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/JonStanley
> 
> We have a meeting today at 1700 UTC in #fedora-meeting - would be good
> to have you there as well.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> -- 
> Christopher Brown

I think that meeting is around 4am local time, so I may have to give it
a miss. Perhaps you could put on the agenda how high the barrier for
entry is. Not only do I have to create a separate Fedora account aside
form the bugzilla that I have, I have to give out my personal details,
and then I have to learn enough about gpg to make a key to sign up for
the account.

If I have to jump through all the above hoops just to close trivial
bugs, I'm not sure if I'll bother.

I can see no reason why anyone would need my address and phone number.
What is stopping anyone from putting in fake ones.

I was tempted just to enter address as something like:
27 Gumdrop House
Lolly Pop Lane.
(http://thinkexist.com/quotation/owww-look-at-me-marge-i-m-making-people-happy-i-m/748180.html)


Surely entering the phone number and address details is useless without
verification anyway.

Lex