Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 25 May 2004 12:42:33 -0400 | Subject | Re: [RFD] Explicitly documenting patch submission | From | "J. Bruce Fields" <> |
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On Sat, May 22, 2004 at 11:46:29PM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote: > This is not about proving authorship - it's about documenting the > process. This does not replace or preclude things like PGP-signed > emails, this is _documenting_ how we work, so that we can show people > who don't understand the open source process.
What aspects of the process do you want to document?
The patch-submission process can be more complicated than a simple path up a heirarchy of maintainers--patches get bounced around a lot sometimes.
If you're trying to document who contributes "intellectual property" to the kernel, then documenting the process of creating the patch would seem more important than documenting the actual submission--any significant change is often the result of complicated discussions between multiple parties who wouldn't necessarily appear in the chain of submittors.
I gues I'm still a little vague as to exactly what sort of questions we expect to be able to answer using this new documentation.
A couple examples (which I think aren't too farfetched): * Developer A submits a patch which is dropped by maintainer B. I later notice this and resubmit A's patch to B. I don't change the patch at all, and the resubmission is my only contribution to the process. Do I need to tag on my own "Signed-off-by" line? * I write a patch. Developers X and Y suggest significant changes. I make the changes before I submit them to maintainer Z. Suppose the changes are significant enough that I no longer feel comfortable representing myself as the sole author of the patch. Should I also be asking developer X and Y to add their own "Signed-off-by" lines?
--Bruce Fields - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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