On 7/31/14 8:18 AM, Jeff Epler wrote:
> A problem that has arisen several times in the history of LinuxCNC is
> that a well-meaning developer contributes to the software, but their
> additions are not explicitly licensed.

I agree this is a problem.


> In the Linux kernel, they have addressed this problem by requiring a
> "Signed-off-by" pseudo-header in every commit message.  The presence of
> a Signed-off-by means that the named person certifies the Deveoper
> Certificate of Origin, which basically states that the contribution is
> Open Source that is compatible with the project's license.

I didn't know that's what Signed-off-by meant.  That's handy!

https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/SubmittingPatches

How does this work in practice?

If someone emails a short patch to the list (or directly to a 
maintainer) and says "i release this under GPLv2+, please merge", then a 
committer could 'git am --signoff' the patch, that makes sense.

What if someone mails a pull request instead, "please fetch this branch 
from my repo and merge"?  At that point would the committer have to 
rewrite each commit message by hand to add the Signed-off-by tag? 
Rebase doesn't have a 'sign-off' option...  That'd get unwieldy for big 
branches like Rob Ellenberg's new trajectory planner.


> I also believe that we should implement a pre-receive or update hook
> that checks for s-o-b headers and rejects any push that doesn't have
> them; I have a partially implemented script for that, but it's not
> debugged yet.  Otherwise, un-s-o-b'd code will inevitably creep in by
> the actions of well-meaning developers.

Yes, if this policy is adopted, automatic checks would be great.


> diff --git a/docs/SubmittingPatches b/docs/SubmittingPatches
> diff --git a/docs/developer-certificate-of-origin 
> b/docs/developer-certificate-of-origin

Looks like to rsync(?) output crept into your patch...

We should add a blurb to the "Contributing to LinuxCNC" document too.


-- 
Sebastian Kuzminsky

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Infragistics Professional
Build stunning WinForms apps today!
Reboot your WinForms applications with our WinForms controls. 
Build a bridge from your legacy apps to the future.
http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=153845071&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk
_______________________________________________
Emc-developers mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-developers

Reply via email to