[gorgoiler]

This is a helpful contribution. Thank you. My counterpoint is only on real names: LKML and Debian Developers are two examples of projects I trust and I think part of that is real names. Another part is the publicly known application process: namely that you can’t join unless vouched for by other members, and a degree of vetting is in place.

Elevating a browser to the same standard as (or even higher than!) an OS is completely reasonable.

[II2II]

I can definitely understand the need for real names from the perspective of people managing a project, along with someone vouching for those people. But managing a project is different from using the product of that projects. I very much doubt that many users have the ability or desire to do the vetting themselves so I am perfectly fine with maintaining the privacy of developers.

Also agreed that browsers should be held to the same high standard as operating systems. Many people access confidential data with their browsers, may it be their own data or data about other people. (Going back to the notion of trust, I worked for a bank in the early days of the public Internet. The bank I worked for only allowed clients to use the bank's own software. In retrospect, a big part of the reason was the human angle rather than the technical angle. Sure, web browsers may have used the same level of encryption. Yet that is meaningless when the browser itself may serve as a man-in-the-middle.)