I find it unfortunate that some of the responses in the mailing list amounted to "don't worry about being discriminated against because of your 'real' name; I pinky-promise that we're all nice people". Members of a cryptography community should know better than to demand that someone explain why their distrust is justified.
Obligatory link to two articles I think everyone implementing a name system should read:
1. "A Model for Identity in Software" [0] describes how people often have more than one identity. Different identities might have different personalities and names, especially on the Internet. For example, one person can go by "Johnathan", "Mr. Doe", "Jonny", "NoobMaster69", and "Dad" and react differently when greeted by each name.
2. "Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names" [1] shows that nearly every assumption you make about names is wrong, and it's therefore best to rely upon as few assumptions as possible.
Personally, I find my non-anonymous online pseudonym "Seirdy" to be more "real" than my real name. In real life, my physical counterpart doesn't really have anyone to talk to about the things he's most interested in; that's something only I (Seirdy) can do.
What "real name" means is almost never clear; it's another reason why I dislike most "real name" policies.
Many people go by a nickname IRL; in some circumstances, nicknames stick so closely that most of their friends don't even know their legal names.
Changing one's legal name can be a difficult process. Many (most?) trans people's legal names are deadnames [0]. Facebook and Google+'s loosening of "real name" policies was partly done to address this very valid concern.
The concept of a "real" name assumes that people typically go by one name, and it forces people to choose the "realest" version of themselves. Often, they're forced to choose a version of themselves that isn't their "realest".
About everybody in this forum should know who this mysterious rsw is, Riad S. Wahby of course. With a public record at GitHub and his company jfet.org.
https://github.com/kwantam
Extremely pedantic. Typical mailing list explosions. I'm not in this forum and immediately knew, because this guy was first suspicious in recommending insecurity into their Security paragraph without proper argumentation.
Corollary: if you can't mutate them or find it, you need to continue practicing manual memory management until the enlightenment kicks in, and you crack the mechanics universal address space.
Obligatory link to two articles I think everyone implementing a name system should read:
1. "A Model for Identity in Software" [0] describes how people often have more than one identity. Different identities might have different personalities and names, especially on the Internet. For example, one person can go by "Johnathan", "Mr. Doe", "Jonny", "NoobMaster69", and "Dad" and react differently when greeted by each name.
[0]: https://christine.website/blog/identity-model-software-2021-...
2. "Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names" [1] shows that nearly every assumption you make about names is wrong, and it's therefore best to rely upon as few assumptions as possible.
[1]:https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-...
Personally, I find my non-anonymous online pseudonym "Seirdy" to be more "real" than my real name. In real life, my physical counterpart doesn't really have anyone to talk to about the things he's most interested in; that's something only I (Seirdy) can do.