From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S264686AbUEXUce (ORCPT ); Mon, 24 May 2004 16:32:34 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S264685AbUEXUce (ORCPT ); Mon, 24 May 2004 16:32:34 -0400 Received: from fw.osdl.org ([65.172.181.6]:57273 "EHLO mail.osdl.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S264688AbUEXUcB (ORCPT ); Mon, 24 May 2004 16:32:01 -0400 Date: Mon, 24 May 2004 13:31:49 -0700 (PDT) From: Linus Torvalds To: Andi Kleen cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: [RFD] Explicitly documenting patch submission In-Reply-To: Message-ID: References: <1YUY7-6fF-11@gated-at.bofh.it> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Mon, 24 May 2004, Andi Kleen wrote: > > Linus Torvalds writes: > > > Hola! > > > > This is a request for discussion.. > > What's not completely clear to me is how the Signed-off-by > header is related to this: > > > Developer's Certificate of Origin 1.0 > [...] > > I assume you're not expecting that people actually print out and sign > this and send it somewhere? No. > You're just asking that they read it and confirm to the maintainer > that they did, right? Right. We'd add it to the Documentation directory, and add pointers to it to anything that mentions the "Signed-off-by:" thing (eg things like SubmittingPatches). All just to make sure that people are aware of what it means to say "Signed-off-by:" > That sounds quite involved to me. I bet in some companies this > Certificate would first be sent to the legal department for approval, > delaying the patch for a long time Having worked at a company like that, I can say that that is true pretty much regardless of what the patch submission is (it's about a million times _worse_ if you have something like the FSF copyright assignment thing, but it's certainly true even for random open source things that don't have the physical paperwork and copyright assignment). > 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. No. The point is that a maintainer does NOT need to do this, exactly because we'd try to educate people to have the "Signed-off-by:" line pass with the patch from the very beginning. > 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). In some cases companies even go through huge efforts to > keep the original developers secret (I won't give names here, but it > happens). Absolutely. And the whole sign-off procedure is _designed_ for this. The person who signs off on a patch does not need to be the author: in fact at a company that has "release people", it's not _supposed_ to be the author, it's supposed to be the company release person (although the original author may well have signed off on it internally - but that's not somethign that an external maintainer would know about or even care about). Linus