Re: RFC: reviewer's statement of oversight

Sam Ravnborg
2007-10-09T17:43:16Z

Hi Neil.
>
> From: The Author, Primary Author, or Authors of the patch.
> Authors should also provide a Signed-off-by: tag.
>
> Purpose: to give credit to authors
The SCM should include this info and we should not duplicate this
in the changelog's.
I know some tools require this format but that's something else.

> > +
> > +Signed-off-by: A person adding a Signed-off-by tag is attesting that the
> > + patch is, to the best of his or her knowledge, legally able
> > + to be merged into the mainline and distributed under the
> > + terms of the GNU General Public License, version 2. See
> > + the Developer's Certificate of Origin, found in
> > + Documentation/SubmittingPatches, for the precise meaning of
> > + Signed-off-by.
>
> Purpose: to allow subsequent review of the originality of
> the contribution should copyright questions arise.

We often use s-o-b to docuemnt the path a patch took from origin (the
top-most s-o-b) to tree apply (lowest s-o-b).
This is IIUC part of the intended behaviour of s-o-b but it is not
clear from the above text.

> > +
> > +Acked-by: The person named (who should be an active developer in the
> > + area addressed by the patch) is aware of the patch and has
> > + no objection to its inclusion. An Acked-by tag does not
> > + imply any involvement in the development of the patch or
> > + that a detailed review was done.
>
> Purpose: to inform upstream aggregators that
> consensus was achieved for the change. This is
> particularly relevant for changes that affect multiple
> Maintenance Domains.
>
consensus seems too strong a wording here. consensus imply more than one
that agree on the patch where I often see people give their "Acked-by:" by
simple changelog reading.
So Acked-by: is not used like documented today.

Sam