Doubt concerning releasing code anonymously

[Chris Travers]

2010/2/27 André Barbosa <andreqb at gmail.com>:
> Hello,
> This is my first participation in this mailing list and I am glad I am able
> to talk with other people of the OSI community. Here is my problem:
>
> I am thinking about releasing a program and I want it to have the same
> assurances that has an Open Source licensed software like the BSD one.
>
> I have been searching for some documentation concerning the topic and I
> couldn't find anything related.
>
> I also thought about releasing it under a nickname instead of my real name,
> because that I have already seen around the web but I have never read in a
> license terms one could do that.

IANAL, but my understanding is that this is irrelevant to the
licensing question.  And technically it isn't anonymous but rather
pseudonymous. (I.e. you want to use a fake name rather than no name at
all.)

Consider the following:  Suppose you write a novel and decide your own
name isn't going to sell the novel very well, so you publish it under
a nom de plume.  That doesn't affect either your copyright on the
novel nor your ability to license it out to publishers in an
agreed-upon fashion.

The major reason not to do this however is verifiability.  If you
don't attach your own name to the code, it may be harder for some
folks to verify that you really did a) write the code and b) license
under the described terms.  I don't really see a reason to release
code anonymously though occasionally some of the projects I have
worked on have accepted contributions from long-standing pseudonymous
community members.  This is fairly rare though.

I might be missing something but I don't think there is any limitation
regarding pseudonymous releases and any of the major open source
releases.

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers