From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S264984AbUEYRQa (ORCPT ); Tue, 25 May 2004 13:16:30 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S264986AbUEYRPg (ORCPT ); Tue, 25 May 2004 13:15:36 -0400 Received: from fw.osdl.org ([65.172.181.6]:61857 "EHLO mail.osdl.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S264984AbUEYRPU (ORCPT ); Tue, 25 May 2004 13:15:20 -0400 Date: Tue, 25 May 2004 10:15:15 -0700 (PDT) From: Linus Torvalds To: Ben Collins cc: Kernel Mailing List Subject: Re: [RFD] Explicitly documenting patch submission In-Reply-To: <20040525131139.GW1286@phunnypharm.org> Message-ID: References: <20040525131139.GW1286@phunnypharm.org> 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 Tue, 25 May 2004, Ben Collins wrote: > > I've got a question about this. A lot of times I get patches that are > just one/two-liners and the explanation is somewhat self-explantory, > etc. Say the patch comes to me from some patch collection maintainer, > who got it from the original author. > > So the original person never put a Signed-off-by, and neither did the > person who sent me the patch, should I still add the eplicit > Signed-off-by's to the patch, and add myself, before sending it to you? You should never sign off for somebody else. You _can_ sign off as yourself, and just add a note of "From xxxx". That's what the (b) case is all about (ie "to the best of my knowledge it's already under a open-source license"). Of course, if it's a _big_ work with lots of original content, and you're unsure of exactly what the original author wanted to do with this, you obviously should _not_ sign off on it. But you knew that. Linus