Re: [RFD] Explicitly documenting patch submission

Linus Torvalds
2004-05-25T18:52:02Z

On Tue, 25 May 2004, Ben Collins wrote:
>
> Linus could just concern himself with atleast us subsystem-maintainers
> putting the Signed-off-by on there and not worry himself about the other
> headers.

Note that this is how it's supposed to always work, except you should
replace "Linus" with "any maintainer".

At any point in the chain, you should always have to worry only about the
"immediate predecessor". That's why the certificate is "recursive", ie if
the immediate predecessor signed off, then you can always sign off
yourself, without worrying about any history, and you've done the "right
thing".

Linus