Some have rolled their eyes at the "paranoid" requirement from the #Debian community of in-person gpg key signing as a step to become a Debian developer, and it's often been a real barrier.

But I'm reminded of it at the #OSSummit keynote today as the #Linux Foundation's Jim Zemlin talks about the xz vulnerability and identity verification of developers.

It was never paranoia. It doesn't solve everything, and people can still be dishonest, but it was never excessive paranoia.

@pleia2 I would argue that in-person verification is simply not enough against a state actor. They would think nothing of spending time and money to cultivate a believable individual persona with a verifiable backstory that would survive any cursory verification.