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
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