From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S264512AbUEXUzr (ORCPT ); Mon, 24 May 2004 16:55:47 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S264691AbUEXUzr (ORCPT ); Mon, 24 May 2004 16:55:47 -0400 Received: from mailout08.sul.t-online.com ([194.25.134.20]:51633 "EHLO mailout08.sul.t-online.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S264512AbUEXUzp convert rfc822-to-8bit (ORCPT ); Mon, 24 May 2004 16:55:45 -0400 From: tglx@linutronix.de (Thomas Gleixner) Reply-To: tglx@linutronix.de Organization: linutronix To: Andi Kleen , Linus Torvalds Subject: Re: [RFD] Explicitly documenting patch submission Date: Mon, 24 May 2004 22:50:38 +0200 User-Agent: KMail/1.5.4 Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org References: <1YUY7-6fF-11@gated-at.bofh.it> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8BIT Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200405242250.38442.tglx@linutronix.de> X-Seen: false X-ID: bHDdngZCwe0QPDpDfEDIBXu0V4gNLKDV8At+0iJY8oiRPckBnFSN6x@t-dialin.net Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Monday 24 May 2004 21:57, Andi Kleen wrote: > Linus Torvalds writes: > > Hola! > > This is a request for discussion.. > e.g. normally the maintainer would just answer "ok, looks good, > applied". Now they would need to ask "ok, did you write this. if not > through which hands did it pass"? and wait for a reply and then only > add the patch when you know whom to put into all these Signed-off-by > lines. What I'm missing in this discussion is a clear distinction between patches and contributions. A patch is usually a more or less small fix / improvement of existing code and should be treated accordingly. Recording "signed-off" chains for those would just using up repository space and could be used just for another type of useless statistics. Contributions are larger pieces of code introducing new functionalities or algorithms and contain probably stuff which could be classified as "Intellectual Property" and therefor Linus' proposal is surely appropriate. I'm not sure how to distinguish exactly between patches and contributions, but I'm not convinced, that - (if x > 0) + (if x >= 0) signed-off hacker signed-off module-maintainer signed-off subsystem-maintainer signed-off linus / andrea /... would really be helpful and desired. > This is not unrealistic, For example for patches that are "official > projects" by someone it often happens that not the actual submitter > sends the patch, but his manager (often not even cc'ing the original > developer). .... If the manager or who ever ensures by signing off that this code is according to the submission rules, then it should be sufficient for the maintainer. -- Thomas ________________________________________________________________________ Steve Ballmer quotes the statistic that IT pros spend 70 percent of their time managing existing systems. That couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that 99 percent of these systems run Windows, could it? ________________________________________________________________________ linutronix - competence in embedded & realtime linux http://www.linutronix.de mail: tglx@linutronix.de