Re: [PATCH v3] staging: wilc1000: Use crc7 in lib/ rather than a private copy

[George Spelvin <lkml@SDF.ORG>]

On Sat, Apr 04, 2020 at 08:25:37PM +0300, Dan Carpenter wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 03, 2020 at 11:40:28PM +0000, George Spelvin wrote:
>> I understand that it's addressed more to patch authors than
>> maintainers forwarding them, but I've read that thing a dozen times,
>> and the description of S-o-b always seemed to be about copyright.
> 
> It's to say that you didn't add anything which you shouldn't have, for
> example, secret SCO UnixWare stuff.

Yes, I'm familiar with the (irritating) history.  Which is why I
had the idea stuck in my head that that it was all about copyright
and if you didn't add anything copyrightable, an S-o-b wasn't
required.  No more than I'd ask for one from the administrator
of the e-mail system which delivered it.

submitting-patches.rst says "sign your work".  It didn't occur to
me to sign something that wasn't my work.

>> So I had assumed that edits which were below the de minimus standard
>> of copyright didn't need a separate S-o-b.
>> 
>> Am I right that there should be an S-o-b from everyone from the
>> patch author to the patch committer (as recorded in git)?  And the
>> one exception is that we don't need S-o-b for git pulls after that,
>> because the merge commits record the information?
> 
> Yes.  Also if people added their S-o-b for git merges it would change
> the git hash for the patch which would suck.

I understand the technical difficulties, but lawyers aren't always
deterred by such things. :-)  Seriously, it's clear there has to
be an exception; the question was about the scope of the exception.

Thank you for your patience clarifying this stuff for the nth time.