Besides all the other arguments, fingerprints aren’t like the movies. You need a reasonably flat surface to get a fingerprint from.

Getting a fingerprint from a house or a car to prove that someone was there at some point, any time in the past, is possible. Getting a fingerprint from a plastic baggy to prove someone held it would be much harder.

The distortions would make it extremely hard to match against a database. If they compare it to you then it might show a match, so if you’re a suspect they might make a direct comparison. If they compare it to the cop? Remember the cop is innocent until proven guilty, so they can’t compel them to give fingerprints for comparison. Yes, they could be in a database, but remember the distortion makes it hard to automatically find this.

Any lab work has a cost, and police are lazy. They aren’t going to spend time or money trying to solve a case. They go with best effort.

What if the shotgun makes a noise you don’t recognize? Hit it with the toaster?

Emacs is a part time job!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urcL86UpqZc

There are options for additional checks they could explore that are less creepy.

1. Make someone pay a one time charge. This might not give you the full details but the transaction gives more data, and shows someone is willing to back up their request for access with a paper trail which has fraud protection laws.
2. Third party verification services. Like your bank, who already have details about you. There just needs to be a way for them to vouch for you. Credit reporting agencies probably already do this, but I kinda think this is almost creepier than giving Facebook a video.
3. Verifying the email attached to your account is a good first step.

In the meantime I think knowing the password should at least get you logged in enough for account maintenance. You should be able to set the entire account private and take it offline with limited toggles. Restoring full access would require the additional verification.

The free software as a passion project idea became untenable long ago. It works for UNIX style utilities where the project stays small and changes can be managed by one person but breaks down on large projects.

As a user, try to get a feature added or bugfix merged. Its a weeks or sometimes months/years long back and forth trying to get the bikeshedding correct.

As a maintainer, spend time reading and responding to bug reports which are all unrelated to the project. Deal with a few pull requests that don’t quite fit the project, but might with more polish. Take a month off and wait for the inevitable “is this being maintained?” Issues reports.

I contribute back changes because I want those features but don’t want to maintain a longterm fork of the project. When they’re rejected or ignored its demoralizing. I can tell myself “This is the way of open source” but sometimes I just search for another project that better fits my needs rather than trying to work on the one I submitted changes to.

That is the happy path. The sad path of this is how many people look at the aforementioned problems and never bother to submit a pull request because it’s too much trouble? Git removed most of the technical friction of contributing, but there is still huge social friction.

Long story short: the man pages maintainer deserves something for all the “work” part of maintaining. He can continue to not be paid for the passion part.