Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sun, 30 Jul 2017 20:52:36 +0200 | From | Pavel Machek <> | Subject | Re: Problematic culture around Signed-off-by |
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Hi!
> I've been away from kernel development for a bit, but I've returned and > I'm troubled by what seems to be an entrenched and widespread (IMO) > misuse of the "Signed-off-by:" in commits. > > I've now either been asked to sign off RFC quality patches "because its > quicker" on more than one occasion in the last week or so, and I've seen > others signing off code which clearly has no hope of going anywhere near > the kernel. (eg. // commented out lines) > > I was of the impression that Signed-off-by: was intended to be used on > essentially *finished* commits, indicating both readiness for inclusion > upstream and ones ownership of the copyright. > > Even if the intent is *purely* a copyright isue, Signing off > *everything* surely makes it far too easy for people to get junk into > the kernel.
Well, maintainers should not apply obvious junk to their trees, signed-off or not.
I normally sign-off everything... because getting patch without sign-off is nasty. If maintainer gets unclean, but signed-off patch, he can just clean it up, add his sign-off and continue normally.
That may or may not be allowed if patch is not signed-off. (We are in lawyer teritory now.)
So I'd recommend signing everything, and if patch is considered "not ready", make it clear in some other way.
Pavel -- (english) http://www.livejournal.com/~pavelmachek (cesky, pictures) http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~pavel/picture/horses/blog.html [unhandled content-type:application/pgp-signature] | |