Messages in this thread | | | Date | Mon, 24 May 2004 13:31:49 -0700 (PDT) | From | Linus Torvalds <> | Subject | Re: [RFD] Explicitly documenting patch submission |
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On Mon, 24 May 2004, Andi Kleen wrote: > > Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org> 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).
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