Re: [RFD] Explicitly documenting patch submission

Bradley Hook
2004-05-25T19:44:39Z

La Monte H.P. Yarroll wrote:
>
>>
>> Why not design the DCO so that it assumes an author accepts the most
>> recent published version unless specified. You could then shorten the
>> line to:
>>
>> DCO-Sign-Off: Random J Developer <random@developer.org>
>
>
> If I'm looking at a 15 year old document where do I go to find out what
> "most recent published version" meant at that time? This assumes we're
> talking about a document that has a clear timestamp. If we care about
> the version number at all, it should be in every signoff line.
>

It's similar to when an author licenses something under GPL with:

"either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version."

By doing this, you are trusting that whoever is in charge of releasing a
new revision of the DCO is not going to put something in there that
would alter the base meaning or intent of the DCO; Only corrections or
additions to allow for special cases. Notice that the DCO reads as 3
options ORed together, which means only 1 has to be true. If that design
were maintained, then any additions/corrections should not have an
affect on an old sign-off.

If anyone is concerned about this, then they should include a version
number in the sign off. But put the version after the line identifier
(Signed-off-by:), and only if you - the person signing off - are going
to care about it. But if you're that paranoid, you should probably also
be explicitly stating which option you are signing off on, and "what
DCO" you are using...

DCO 1.0(a) as submitted by Linus Torvalds on the LKML on 5/23/04: Random
J Developer <random@developer.org>

Come on now, get serious.

~Brad