adding user starting with caps letter fails on linux

[inode0]

On Mon, 10 Jan 2005 11:27:04 -0600, Jay Berryman <jay.berryman at sitel.com> wrote:
> I had the same issue and Fedora Core 1.  This is a bug in RedHat.  This is
> how I resolved it.  Add the user using all lower-case letters first.  Then
> edit the user and group names to how you want them in the /etc/passwd,
> /etc/group, and /etc/shadow files.

>From the manpage for the passwd file on RHEL 3 it clearly states that
the account field in a passwd entry should *not* contain capital
letters.

I'm not sure it is fair to characterize this as a bug.  While other
flavors of UNIX-like operating systems do allow this, I'm not aware of
anyone who actually uses mixed-case usernames.   If you have one user
named foo and another named Foo and a third named FOO where do you
suppose mail to any of these will be delivered?  You may avoid
problems like this using mixed-case usernames if you keep them unique
ignoring case, but this seems like it is asking for problems to me.

I'm curious about what is motivating people to want to use mixed-case
usernames in the first place?

John