Re: [gentoo-project] Date-of-birth in developer applications

[Raymond Jennings <shentino@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Jun 20, 2018 at 1:32 AM Michał Górny <mgorny@gentoo.org> wrote:
>
> W dniu śro, 20.06.2018 o godzinie 10∶24 +0200, użytkownik Kristian
> Fiskerstrand napisał:
> > On 06/20/2018 10:16 AM, Michał Górny wrote:
> > > However, I'm not aware of any good
> > > justification for collecting this kind of personal information.
> >
> > Immediately I can think of two good reasons for this information, (i) as
> > a disambiguifier for matching names, at least across europe it is common
> > to refer to an individual "A born DD.MM.YYYY",
>
> Please tell me, how many times did we have to disambiguate two
> developers using the same name?  Even if we ever have to do that, do you
> really think we'd use one's birthday all over the place?
>
> >  (ii) verify legal age for
> > entering into agreements. One can argue that without further
> > verification of (ii) it has less value, but at least that would be a
> > misrepresentation so shifting the question a bit if it ever becomes an
> > issue with FLA/DCO etc.
>
> a. 'Legal age' may differ per country, so birth date alone is not very
> useful.
>
> b. There is no reason to store the full birth date if all we need is
> a boolean whether someone is of 'legal age'.
>
> c. We don't even have any clue what to do if someone is *not* of 'legal
> age'.

As a logical issue, I will point out that point a, legal age differing
per country, directly contradicts point b, using a simple boolean.

The fact that there are multiple countries with possible disparate
concepts of "legal age" preempts the usefulness of a simple boolean,
and in my observation actually *increases* the viability of using DOB
as legal age.

Quite simply, if we WERE to use a single boolean the first question
we'd have on our hands when answering "is this developer of legal age"
is first to ask "of what country?"
>
> --
> Best regards,
> Michał Górny