Re: Signed-off-by and aliases

[Alex Elsayed <eternaleye@gmail.com>]

Loic Dachary wrote:

> Hi Alex,
> 
> On 17/08/2015 22:19, Alex Elsayed wrote:
<snip>
>> This is where I see a subtle, but meaningful distinction: Accepting from
>> aliases *which have submitted a DCO* means that the person behind the
>> alias, even if we don't know their name, has bound themselves to a
>> standard ov behavior.
>> 
>> Accepting from arbitrary aliases does _not_ carry that meaning.
> 
> Yes. Although we don't do formal background checks, we make sure that each
> commit is Signed-off-by: the author as required by
> https://github.com/ceph/ceph/blob/master/SubmittingPatches#L22 which is
> linked from the https://github.com/ceph/ceph/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.rst
> document that shows whenever someone submits a pull request.
> 
> I also believe this is an important distinction and I would feel
> uncomfortable if Ceph accepted contributions (aliases or not) that are not
> Signed-off one way or the other.

The kernel does something slightly different, in a very careful manner: 
Signed-off-by says that you have _submitted_ the DCO - as in, you must have, 
from the same address as you signed off by, emailed the DCO itself to the 
list.

The S-o-B tag, then, simply says "If you look, you'll find my affirmation of 
intent to follow the DCO" - it is not, in itself, anything other than a 
pointer. This prevents people from copypasta'ing the S-o-B line as a magic 
incantation, without understanding the meaning. (Which the kernel has found 
_does_ happen _anyway_, but with the "actually submitted a DCO" requirement 
they can _detect_ that.)